Apple is planning to release the next version of the iPhone in June, with support for running apps in the background and a brand new, more powerful hardware architecture, according to reports on the buzzing Apple blogs.Reports from far away in the United Arab Emirates point to the release of a new iPhone in June, says the AppleInsider blog. AppleInsider says the new iPhone will be based on system-on-a-chip components developed by Apple using ARM processor cores and incorporating new PowerVR video and graphics processing core design developed by Imagination Technologies.

Apple also is working on technology to allow users to run apps in the background, according to MacRumors.com. Right now, users need to completely shut down an app before switching to another app, with only a few of Apple's own iPhone native apps permitted to run in the background, such as Mail and the iPod app. The ability to run apps in the background would be a big help for users looking to run Internet radio apps like Pandora, or instant-messaging apps. MacRumors said that limited support for background apps -- for one or two "user-selectable background processes" -- might be coming for the iPhone 3.0 software, with more robust multiprocessing support expected when Apple upgrades iPhone hardware.

It doesn't take much of a fortune-teller to predict a new iPhone in June; the first-generation iPhone went on sale in June 2007 and the iPhone 3G in early July, 2008. But take all these reports with a big spoonful of salt: They all depend on bloggers reading articles based on other people's interviews, and then interpreting what the original source might have meant to say based on what the blogger read that the reporter wrote. "This could easily be a misunderstanding on the part of the reporter, a misquote, or a combination of signs, portents, and omens, but it's certainly an interesting little tidbit," says Engadget.

(Via TechMeme.)

My colleague Alex Wolfe reported yesterday that Apple plans to add videoconferencing support to the iPhone. My colleague Marin Perez says Apple has new iPhone firmware in the pipeline, following the release of iPhone firmware 2.2.1 last week.