We’ve got well over a month to go before even the earliest we could hope to get some official word from Apple on the release of its next iPhone. Recently, we’ve heard a rumor that the announcement may come in August, and yet another that we should expect the smartphone to arrive in September. The latest puts one more hash mark in the September column, this time coming out of China.

Apple’s been meeting with China Mobile recently. We’d expect most of the details of such meetings to remain confidential, but apparently one employee didn’t get that memo, and for one reason or another, posted an announcement that the carrier would get the iPhone 5 this September.

After that message was picked-up by a Chinese news site, the original was subsequently taken down, as we all-to-often see happen with companies mistakenly posting announcements like this on Twitter. We can’t be sure exactly what happened, but there’s at least the possibility that this info is accurate and the leak was quietly covered-up.

Just because the iPhone 5 may come out in China in September doesn’t forego the possibility for a US release in late August, but it would certainly imply that the US launch would be no later than September.

Source: BGR