iPhone 5S and 5C pre-orders advertised by China Telecom

The rumors continue to build that Apple will soon be unveiling two new versions of the iPhone. Those versions are rumored to be the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C. Obviously, Apple isn't going to outright confirm that these devices exist until the official announcement expected at the September 10 Apple event. Ahead of that event, all we can do is continue to check out the rumor fodder including a new one that has surfaced the via China Telecom.

Thursday afternoon an account on Chinese social network Weibo that belongs to China Telecom made a posting advertising pre-orders for the iPhone 5S and 5C. The post was reportedly taken down quickly but not before screenshots were snapped for posterity.

Details in the post reportedly said that China would be one of the first markets to get the new iPhones and customers that want to get the devices early should pre-order at the link. That link didn't offer details, but did have a couple photographs of what were presumably supposed to be the new Apple smartphones.

That pre-order page has now been changed and no longer has photographs of the devices. Now it only has some verbiage telling people who want to get the device to leave their name and telephone number. The page URL those still lists iPhone5s.asp in the URL. This could have been an accident or it could have been an intentional marketing stunt. We've known for a while that Apple really wants to be big in the Chinese market so it's no surprise that China would be one of the initial launch markets for new iPhones.

SOURCE: WSJ