With only a week couple days to go before Steve Jobs' June 9 keynote — and with millions of 3G iPhones reportedly shipped and ready to sell — it's a miracle that nobody outside a small circle of loyal employees, NDA-bound suppliers and (we presume) a few hand-picked reporters has set eyes on one.

Or maybe we have. Since early April, the Apple rumor mill has been steadily grinding out specs and spy photos purporting to represent the new iPhone. Most are surely red herrings or Photoshop creations. But what if one of them is real?

Just in case, here's a collection of the images that have come across my desk over the past few months. If you've seen more — or better — send me the links, and I'll pop them in. [Subscribers: click here to see what I'm talking about.]

April 3: U.S. iPodObserver.com. This one with a shiny black plastic back looked promising for a couple weeks…

April 17: U.S. winandmac.com. A shot of one of the many iPhone cases available for sale in Hong Kong.

April 30: U.S. iLounge. Third-party manufacturers have already started building products using the specs in the diagram below, according to iLounge. "Photographs matching these details are apparently authentic," says iLounge's Jeremy Horwitz, "ones that do not, are not."

May 5: China, WeiPhone.com. This is the first of several white 3G iPhone spy shots. Note the similarity of the second image to the iLounge specs above.

May 19: U.S. Mobilewhack.com. These crisp, professionally produced images are white and rounded, but lack some of the details that have become conventional wisdom, like the Apple logo and the distinctive base.

May 26: Greece, iphonehellas.gr. These shots, formatted to resemble an Apple ad, bear little resemblance to any of the others, but they do pick up the iLounge color scheme.

May 27: The Netherlands, iPhoneclub.nl. Another white iPhone entry, this one from the Netherlands.

June 1: U.S. iPhone Atlas. This matte-black version was allegedly obtained last week during the filming of a 3G iPhone commercial at Apple's Fifth Ave store in New York City, but Arnold Kim of MacRumors points out that it's actually a custom iPhone that's been knocking around since last December. See here.

June 2: U.S. Cult of Mac. Not a spy shot, but rather Leander Kahney's way of showing what an iPhone that's 22% thinner looks like.

June 6: U.S. CrunchGear. Taken from what looks like an Apple or AT&T promotional brochure, this collection of images has, at last, the ring of truth.

Those are the spy shots I've seen. Take them all with a grain of salt and note that none has been pulled off the Web by Apple (AAPL) legal.

We'll update the page with a photo of the real thing, when it arrives.

[Images reposted by kind permission of the Mac Observer, iLounge, MobileWhack, iphonehellas, iPhoneclub, CrunchGear and Engadget.]

It's not China Mobile — and it's not the mainland — but it's a start.

Hutchison Telecom, a small Hong Kong-based carrier controlled by Li Ka-shing (more on him below), announced on Thursday that it had struck a deal with Apple (AAPL) to bring the iPhone to Hong Kong and Macau, two former colonies that are now special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China.

Hutchison (HTX) played an important role in the early days of mobile telephony. In 1994 it launched the Orange brand in the U.K. and in 1997 invested heavily in VoiceStream (now T-Mobile) in the U.S. By 2000 it had sold its interests in both companies and was using the proceeds to develop a global 3G business. Last year it sold controlling interest in its popular "Hutch" product in India to Vodafone for $13.1 billion.

In addition to Hong Kong and Macau, it offers 2G and 3G services in Australia, Ghana, Indonesia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Li Ka-shing — nicknamed "Superman" by the Hong Kong business press — is the picture of a 21st century tycoon. According to Wikipedia, he is the eleventh richest man in the world and the richest person of Chinese descent, with an estimated wealth of $26.5 billion.

Later this year, select Micro Center stores will set up HP-branded areas like this one that show off sleek designs and demonstrate how the products work together. Image: HP

Rahul Sood was working in a Calgary rug store when fate beckoned in 1991. A friendly customer saw him fixing a computer by the front desk, and suggested he take his skills into the PC business.

Sood borrowed $1,500 on a MasterCard and started Voodoo PC, buying high-end parts and building powerful workstation computers for clients in the local oil and gas industry. It didn't take long for him to find a more appropriate niche: In the early days Sood and friends stayed up until 2 a.m. playing graphics-rich video games on the office computers, so it felt natural when Voodoo began building eye-catching rigs for fellow video game enthusiasts.

Now Sood is a key player in Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) push to create breakthrough new computer designs to push it further ahead of its rivals. Since HP acquired Voodoo in 2006, Sood and his team have been working to bring Voodoo's artistic, high-performance culture to HP's mass-market audience. HP's latest efforts, which will be unveiled on June 10, could begin to establish the company as a provider of beautiful technology gear – an image that consumers had traditionally associated with competitors like Apple (AAPL) and Sony (SNE). More

There's a price to pay for the wireless networks we take for granted.

On May 16, Jonathan Guilford, 25, of Fort Payne, Alabama, was working on an AT&T UMTS (3G) project in Haubstadt, Ind., when he fell to his death from a 200-foot tower, according to a report in Wireless Estimator, an online newsletter that covers the communications construction industry.

Falls from high towers are not unheard of in this business. But for more than four months — between Dec. 5 and April 11 — the industry was fatality free.

Then in April, as Wireless Estimator president Craig Lekutis notes with alarm, five workers fell to their death from mobile phone towers in the space of 12 days. Guilford's death in May was the sixth this year.

Accidents like this often come in spurts, says Lekutis, an industry veteran with 27 years experience. There were 10 fatal falls from elevated structures of all kinds (including TV, electrical and water towers) in 2007, and a record 18 in 2006. But this year's concentrated run of cell tower accidents, he says, was extraordinary.

The toll, as recorded by Wireless Estimator:

• April 12: A 34-year-old cell tower technician from Oklahoma man died after falling 150 feet from monopole antenna in Wake Forest, NC. It was the nation's first death in 2008 of a communications worker falling from an elevated structure.
• April 14: A tower worker employed by Cornerstone Tower of Grand Island, Neb., fell to his death in Moorcroft, WY.
• April 15: A 38-year-old technician finished tightening the bolts on a guyed wireless tower in San Antonio, TX, "sort of lean[ed] back a little," according to witnesses, and fell 225 feet to his death.
• April 17: North Carolina suffered its second cell tower fatality in a week when a 46-year-old Chesapeake, VA, man fell from a communications antenna in Frisco, NC.
• April 23: A Griffin, GA, man died from extensive head and chest injuries after falling 100 feet from a communications tower near Natchez, MS. He was reportedly hanging boom gates to a Cell South antenna when he fell.
• May 16: Guilford was rappelling down a load line attached to a 200 foot monopole when he stopped abruptly 140 feet up and bounced as if on a bungee cord, disengaging the carabiner that was secured to the tower. (link)

At least three of the six accidents, Lekutis says, citing industry documents, occurred on AT&T projects.

On May 21, AT&T (T) issued a press release describing its $20 billion roll-out of a nationwide 3G network. It promised to have 275 of the markets it serves in the U.S. 3G-ready by the end of June, and to finish the remaining 75 by the end of the year (see here). AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. A new, 3G version of that device is widely expected to be released in June.

A spokesman for AT&T Mobile confirms that Jonathan Guilford was working on a tower for an AT&T 3G network, but denies that his death or the others had anything to do with the June deadline. "That is a software upgrade," says William Marks. "You go to each tower and use a laptop to perform the upgrade at the base station at the bottom of the tower. There is no need to climb towers."

Marks acknowledges that AT&T is continuing to bring 3G networking to new markets in the U.S., work that involves building new towers and installing new antennas. But he says that this is part of the company's broader 3G roll-out, and unrelated to any events in June.

On April 21, after the first two deaths on its projects, AT&T called for a construction stand down and issued an order to subcontractors that read, in part:

"AT&T … requires you to hold, at a minimum, a half-day safety refresher training course this week with all of your construction employees and subcontractors providing services for AT&T. Upon completion of the safety refresher training this week, AT&T expects that you will reinforce this training with additional random safety checks at the construction sites to ensure that appropriate safety measures are being used."

AT&T's Marks prefers to describe the order as a "refresher course," rather than stand down. "We consider the safety of our contractors and our employees to be our first priority," he says.

[Photo courtesy of Wireless Estimator.]

You can finally color Scandinavia and the Baltic States Apple red.

The news came Tuesday morning in a one-sentence press release of the kind that has become a cell phone-industry standard since Steve Jobs got into the business:

"TeliaSonera today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia later this year." (link)

With that announcement, Apple (AAPL) filled in one of the last remaining gaps in its international rollout of the iPhone, a new version of which is expected to be released in June.

The addition of these Nordic and Baltic States brings to 67 the total number of countries that will offer the iPhone for sale before the end of the year, according to the list maintained by APPLinvestors.

China is the last major holdout, but there was movement on that front over the weekend. See Did China just open the door to Apple's iPhone?

With 115 million subscribers, TeliaSonera (TLSN.ST) is the largest Nordic and Baltic State fixed-line, broadband and mobile operator, according to the latest MobileWorld report. Based in Stockholm, it serves some of the world's most sophisticated cell phone users.

There were plenty of losers Monday in the wake of the People's Republic of China's sweeping overhaul of its telecommunications industry.

China Mobile lost more than $25 billion in market value after the government announced over the weekend that it was merging two smaller competitors in an effort to weaken the giant carrier's hold on the country's cell phone business — prompting Goldman Sachs to issue a rare "sell" rating on China Mobile's (CHL) shares.

Markets sank across the Pacific Rim on the news. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 2.4%. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 3.1%. Japan's Nikkei slumped 2.3% to its lowest level in a month

But there may be several winners: including Steve Jobs' Apple.

Since last fall, Jobs has been trying — without success — to negotiate an iPhone deal with China Mobile. The country's 583 million subscribers represent the biggest prize on the planet for cell phone makers — the last missing piece in Jobs' plan to blanket the earth with iPhones — and China Mobile controls two thirds of them.

But since the companies last talked, two things have changed. In its recent flurry of deals with other foreign carriers, Apple seems to have backed away from its insistence on hefty revenue-sharing formulas in exchange for exclusivity — the sticking point in its early negotiations with China Mobile.

And now China Mobile's hand has been weakened by its own government.

A Chinese statement issued Monday said that the mergers would set in motion the awarding of licenses for 3G service that supports wireless video, Web surfing and other services, according to an AP report.

That report added that the restructuring would create opportunities for foreign equipment vendors such as Ericsson (ERIC), Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), Nokia (NOK) and Siemens (SI).

We're adding Apple (AAPL) to that list.

There's a Sherman Adams-style political controversy heating up in South America in which the role of the vicuna fur coat is played by a MacBook Air.

The star is Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina — the second woman to hold that office (after Isabel Martinez de Peron).

The supporting role is played by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the second richest man in the world, who controls Telefonos de Mexico (TMX) and thus telecommunications over much of Latin America. His name came up in association with Apple earlier this month when Steve Jobs chose his wireless spinoff, America Movil (AMX), to bring the iPhone to 16 countries in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. (see here)

The story begins when billionaire Slim gave President Kirchner the gift of a slim, elegant MacBook Air. The Argentine press got hold of a photograph of the event and began stirring up trouble for La Pinguina, as they have nicknamed her (because of her husband's roots in southern Argentina).

The issue, for several Argentinian newspapers (see here, for example, in Spanish) is whether a MacBook Air, which can fetch more than AR$9,600 in the devalued Argentinian dollar ($3,096 in U.S. dollars), should be considered a "luxury item" — something the President is forbidden by article 256 of the Penal Code to accept as a personal gift.

The code is usually invoked for really big items, like the $120,000 red Ferrari one of her predecessors, Carlos Menem, was forced to turn over to the state.

At least one Argentinian lawyer has come to Kirchner's defense, arguing that by comparison a MacBook Air might be considered just a "courtesy," a thing of "little value." (see here)

Maybe in Argentina.

Anway, thanks for the tip goes to Investor Village's boxerconan, who sees the whole thing as more free publicity for Apple (AAPL). Thanks also to macenstein for the link to the photograph. For more on the story, see huibert-aalbers.com.

Dick Cheney spoke this year at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. John McCain came to Ohio Wesleyan. Barack Obama is filling in for Ted Kennedy at Wesleyan University.

In this season of college commencement addresses, I offer, in case you missed it, Steve Jobs speaking to Stanford's class of 2005 about life, death and calligraphy.

"Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories…"

Below the fold, 15 minutes, via YouTube.

More

Here's an intriguing report from ImportGenius, a search engine that gathers "competitive intelligence" by monitoring U.S. Customs records of ocean containers entering American ports.

Searching for shipments to Apple, Inc. (AAPL), employees at the Scottsdale, Ariz., company reported on Friday that they've spotted a "major spike" since mid March in ocean containers marked with a mysterious new label: "electric computers"

“They have never before reported this product on their customs declarations,” says ImportGenius managing director Ryan Peterson, who notes that there has been no corresponding falloff during this period of shipments labeled "desktop computers" or any of the other labels Apple usually uses.

"The fact that they are importing millions of units, combined with dwindling stocks of the first generation of iPhones," persuades Peterson that these "electric computers" are, in fact, the 3G iPhones Apple is expected to release in a matter of weeks.

He makes a strong case, citing records of a total of 188 ocean containers shipped to Apple from two trusted Asian suppliers, Hon Hai Precision Corp. and Quanta Computer.

For example, on March 19 Apple took delivery from Quanta of 20 containers of merchandise, described on the Bills of Lading as “electric computers."

"The initial shipments were followed," according to ImportGenius.com, "on March 27, April 28, May 6 and May 17 with an additional 44 containers—each containing an estimated 40,000 units of the new phone. The sixteen containers imported by Apple Inc. itself—as opposed to the Quanta subsidiary—were delivered on March 19 and 27 to the Jonestown, Pa. facilities of Ingram Micro, Apple’s U.S. distribution partner."

You can read the rest of the report here. It's quite impressive in its specificity. It notes, for example, that "Bill of Lading # HLCUSHA0803FTFR8, arrived at the port of New York on the Vessel NYK Delphinus on May 17th." That shipment contained 504 cartons, weighing 7140 kg, of the vaguely described “electric computer."

"Knowledge is power," declares ImportGenius' promotional material. "Whether you are looking to keep tabs on your competitors with Supply Spy, identify suppliers with ImportScan our easy to use online software makes it easy. You get access to records on nearly every container that entered the United States from 2006 to the present."

Who knew?

Thursday was a red-letter day for 3G iPhone rumors. On Wall St., the "rumor of a rumor" of an iPhone delay was enough to drive Apple (AAPL) share prices down 5 points in midafternoon trading. Meanwhile, a dozen subway stops to the north, a line 60 customers deep had formed spontaneously outside the company's flagship Fifth Ave. store. According to Engadget, at least some of the people in the queue thought the new iPhone had already arrived.

So it was refreshing to receive a note to clients from Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster on Friday morning with some sensible advice about what to expect when Steve Jobs takes the stage at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference on June 9. According to Munster, look for:

• A new iPhone. Like every Apple analyst on record, he believes Jobs will take this opportunity to unveil an iPhone. But following up on a May 20 note in which Munster cautioned investors to keep their expectations in check, he believes the new device will be almost identical to the current model, with the exception of a 3G chipset to allow faster downloads. iPhones in new shapes and sizes, he expects, won't come before January '09.
• A new OS. With the new iPhone will come a new operating system — OS X iPhone — that will open the device up to enterprise software and to all the 3rd party apps that have been under development since March.
• Focus on integration. Munster expects Jobs to spend a lot of time highlighting Apple's "unique value proposition" of having Macs and iPhones running on the same operating system platform. "With control over the hardware and the software, Apple offers a uniquely integrated ecosystem of [consumer electronics] devices, which we believe is driving Mac sales, and vice versa."
• New MacBooks. Given that it's been two years since the MacBook was introduced and that the MacBook Pro is essentially the same design as the PowerBook G4 that came out 5.5 years ago, Munster believes there's a 60% chance Jobs will introduce redesigned notebooks on June 9 and an 80% chance they will come this summer — in time for the back-to-school sales rush.

So when should iPhone buyers queue up? Like Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz, Munster believes that Apple is planning a worldwide release of the new phones in mid-June — not, as previously speculated, June 27 (opening day of Pixar's Wall-E and the anniversary, almost to the day, of the first iPhone's release).

But unlike Gizmodo, Munster gives a good business reason for Jobs to push up the date of release. In a note to clients dated May 16 he points out that a mid-June shipment — one month after the original iPhone was listed as unavailable on its Web site — would allow Apple to book the initial surge of 3G iPhones in the June quarter, making up for all the iPhone sales the company lost in May.