“Reading between the lines of an Apple press release issued early Wednesday, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster believes the company has lined up two important events for the end of June: The return of CEO Steve Jobs and the unveiling of the next generation iPhone,” Phillip Elmer-Dewitt reports for Fortune.

“What Apple announced was that the keynote address for this year’s World Wide Developers Conference will be delivered by marketing vice president Phil Schiller on June 8 and will focus not on new hardware but on software that Apple has been talking about for months: iPhone 3.0 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard,” Elmer-Dewitt reports.

“The analyst believes Jobs may return to Apple with a reduced role, possibly as chairman, with COO Tim Cook assuming the CEO position,” Elmer-Dewitt reports. “Munster also sought to reassure investors who had hoped that the successor to the iPhone 3G might be unveiled at the June 8 keynote. Instead, he expects Apple to schedule a second event, jam-packed with news:”

We expect Apple to host a special event in late June or early July to launch a family of iPhones. We continue to expect multiple models, possibly a high-end iPhone with improved specs from the current version and a low-end version with lower capacity and fewer features along with a reduced pricing plan. Such a model could also be used in Apple’s launch of the iPhone into China as soon as the end of summer ‘09.

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "JES42" for the heads up.]