One of Apple's principal manufacturers is shipping large quantities of an unknown item in advance of the former's WWDC conference on June 9th, Forbes suggests. The magazine notes that in May, Quanta Computer began shipments of a number of unidentified packages, through a port in Oakland, California and a distribution center in Fremont. More importantly, according to Forbes, a substantial amount of packages left the center Wednesday night, with as many as four trucks arriving for pickup during a single 20-minute span.

While Quanta was also preparing to ship iMacs out from the facility, the trucks were covertly loaded with plain brown boxes, bearing no form of easy identification whatsoever. These boxes were kept in close proximity to those for the iMacs, and staff at the facility refused to discuss the contents. "No, no," said one employee, in response to questions about whether the boxes held new iPhones. "If so, I'm not at liberty to discuss it."

If Apple intends to announce new iPhones at WWDC before a late June launch, as believed by many analysts, it would have to already be in the middle of shipping stock to its retail stores, as well as AT&T's. The two corporations have hundreds of stores across the US, and would be likely to sell tens of thousands of units within the first few days of a new phone's availability.