Not much news leaks out of Apple's (AAPL) tight-lipped Cupertino campus. The suppliers and developers working on the new family of iPhones, however, are another matter.

Over the past few weeks, enough bits and pieces have dribbled out of the companies making parts and the programmers writing software for the new iPhones to put together a detailed — if speculative — picture.

Based on leaks from these sources, we can expect at least one of the new iPhones to have:

• A higher-res camera. OmniVision (OVTI) has won an order to supply 3.2 megapixel CMOS image sensors for a new iPhone, according to DigiTimes. The iPhone 3G uses the same 2.0 megapixel camera that came with the first-generation model.
• Video recording and editing. MacRumors has published screen grabs of video controls hidden in the beta version of the new iPhone operating system, and AppleInsider's sources say that the video processing power will be supplied by Imagination's (IMG.L) new multi-core PowerVR chips.
• Lots of memory. A new report, via DigiTimes, that Apple has placed orders for 100 million 8Gb  NAND flash chips, mostly with Samsung Electronics, lends support to rumors that one of the new iPhones will come with 32GB of memory preinstalled — presumably to handle those big video files.
• Faster downloads. Wireless radio specs within iPhone OS 3.0 refer to a more powerful version of the Broadcom (BRCM) chip that supplies Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to the iPhone 3G. The new chip adds support for so-called 802.11n Wi-Fi networks, according to AppleInsider, including the ability to find and join networks in the 5GHz band. That should allow considerably faster throughput than the more commonly used 2.4GHz band.
• More goodies. Among the other capabilities found in various configuration files of OS 3.0, according to MacRumors, are "auto-focus camera," "magnetometer" (i.e. digital compass), and "Voice Control."

It's all coming together now. According to a report carried by the Chinese- language Commercial Times — and picked up by the English-language DigiTimes early Thursday — Taiwan-based handset component suppliers have already begun shipping components and parts for the new iPhones.

We expect them to be unveiled on June 8 at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

See also:

• Apple building 5-6 million new iPhones – Analyst
• Has Apple begun clearing iPhone 3G inventory?
• Rumor round-up: Major iPhone hardware upgrade
• Major iPhone OS upgrade coming this summer

[iPhone 3.0 screengrab courtesy of MacRumors.]

[Update: Barron's Eric Savitz suggests here that when DigiTimes writes "total shipments of 3G iPhones are expected to top 10 million units in the third quarter" it means BY the third quarter, not IN the third quarter. We suspect he is right. Headline and body of text corrected accordingly.]

With the simultaneous launch of the iPhone 3G in 22 countries on July 11, Apple's Taiwanese suppiers are anticipating a bigger-than-expected ramp-up in the third quarter of 2008, according to a report Thursday in Taipei-based DigitTimes.

DigiTimes' report is based on an article in the Chinese-language Commercial Times, a publication with unusually good sources among Apple's far-eastern component manufacturers and assemblers. It quotes an unnamed supplier to the effect that these component makers expect to ship 10 million units to Apple before Sept. 30.

Apple's (AAPL) oft-repeated target is to sell 10 million iPhones in all of 2008. As of June 9, the company had sold 6 million first-generation iPhones, according to Steve Jobs. The company reported more than 3.7 million sold in 2007, which means some 2.3 million have already been sold so far this year.

DigiTimes also translates and reprints a list of the iPhone's suppliers that was compiled by Commercial Times. We've copied it below. As AppleInsider notes, Infineon (IFX), Broadcom (BRCM) and Foxconn (Hon Hai) look like the big winners.

"You'll have it next year."

That was AT&T (T) chairman Randall Stephenson's answer to a question yesterday about when Apple (AAPL) will introduce an iPhone that runs on a faster, third generation wireless network rather than AT&T's 2.5G EDGE network, according to an overnight report.

The remark was made at a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, Calif., and seemed to offer slightly more hope of a speedy delivery than Steve Jobs' latest public comment on the matter.

“Hopefully we’ll see that late next year,” was what Jobs said when asked last September why he hadn't built a 3G iPhone.

A few weeks later, Broadcom began delivering samples of a low-power integrated device it calls "a 3G Phone on a Chip" that would seem to meet Apple's requirements. It will be available next year in bulk for $23 apiece. (see here)

AT&T chairman couldn't comment on how much an iPhone built around such a chip might cost. Steve Jobs "will dictate what the price of the phone is," Stephenson said — a choice of verbs that reveals more about the relationship of the two CEOs than he probably intended.

Engadget speculates that such a phone might fit into the $599 price slot formerly occupied by the 8 gigabyte iPhone while carrying 16 gigabytes of flash memory like the iPod touch.

Rumors that a 3G iPhone might come as early as May 2008 were floating around last week. Will Stephenson's remarks put a damper on Christmas iPhone sales? ParisLemon thinks so. Piper Jaffrey's Gene Munster not so much.

Steve Jobs must have known this was in the works.

Asked again last month why he hadn't built a 3G iPhone, Apple's (AAPL) CEO replied that he was waiting for a chipset that would allow him to deliver 3G speeds with something close to the eight hour talk time the slower EDGE-based iPhone gets now. "Hopefully we'll see that late next year," he said.

He may not have to wait that long. In what could be a preview of the next-generation iPhone, chipmaker Broadcom (BRCM) announced yesterday that it had begun sending manufacturers samples of an integrated device it's calling a "3G Phone On a Chip." The chipset's features read like an iPhone hold-out's wishlist. They include:

• a 3G baseband transceiver supporting download speeds of up to 7.2 megabits per second
• Bluetooth 2.1
• an FM radio receiver
• an FM radio transmitter (for car stereo playback)
• multimedia support for a 5 megapixal camera
• 30 frames per second video with "TV out"
• support for EDGE, HSUPA, HSDPA, and WCDMA

It doesn't do GPS, Wi-Fi or windows.

While Broadcom did not offer battery life estimates, it does describe the chip as "extremely low power."

The BCM21551 was delivered to manufacturers in small quantities yesterday will be available in bulk for $23 apiece. This is one chip Jobs may be tempted to hoard, because if Apple doesn't buy it, its competitors surely will.

Or not. In an oddly time piece, Blackfriar's Carl Howe, who is usually pretty well plugged in to Apple, today published his five reasons why Apple's iPhone Doesn't Need 3G. Latency, he says, is more important than bandwidth. Besides, he adds, high bandwidth radio networks are more error prone. Hmmm.

For more on the Broadcom chipset, see Eric Bangeman's piece in Ars Technica.