Either things aren’t going to plan in Apple’s product development lab, or the company’s PR people are working overtime; Mehdi Hosseini, an analyst with Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. Inc, is quoted as saying that the second-generation (e.g. 3G) iPhone has been pushed back “from the March/April time frame to mid to late summer” [via MacNN].  It comes not long after AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed that Apple would be releasing a 3G iPhone come 2008, which has led some to suspect that the Cupertino-based manufacturer are attempting to rescue their holiday sales by casting doubt on the availability of the next-generation handset.

Others – such as Robert Cringely – see this as the latest gambit in an Apple/AT&T cockfight, with Stephenson’s announcement intended to warn Apple (who have recently been eyeing up the 700MHz spectrum auction, due to be held in January 2008) that the carrier is quite capable of success without them or their bestselling-smartphone product. 

“What I believe is troubling the relationship between AT&T and Apple is the upcoming auction for 700-MHz wireless spectrum and AT&T’s discovery that — as I have predicted for weeks — Apple will be joining Google in bidding. AT&T thought its five-year “exclusive” iPhone agreement with Apple would have precluded such a bid, but that just shows how poorly Randall Stephenson understood Steve Jobs. Steve always hurts his friends to see how much they really love him, so AT&T probably should have expected this kind of corporate body blow” Robert Cringely

Cringely suggests that Apple may include 700MHz-band data cards in future MacBooks, ostensibly keeping their contract with AT&T separate and unchallenged, but simultaneously allowing VoIP over the new network to eventually stand as a competitor.