Only 10 months late, white iPhone 4 may be near

If color aesthetics mattered so much that you couldn't bring yourself to buy a black iPhone 4, Apple's reportedly ready to give you a new choice with the long-delayed shipment of a white version of its top-celling smartphone.

Bloomberg late today cited three sources described as familiar with Apple plans as saying that the white iPhone 4 model will go on sale "in the next few weeks." If, indeed, that turns out to be the case, it would bring down the curtain on one of Apple's few - but more long-lasting - manufacturing and marketing gaffes. When the iPhone 4 debuted last summer, Apple was forced to delay the planned white model because of unspecified manufacturing problems.

Apple, which reports its second-quarter financial results on April 20, got 39 percent of its first-quarter from the iPhone. A white 3GS version has long been available. According to the Bloomberg dispatch, both AT&T and Verizon would get the white iPhone 4 by the end of the month.

A few days after last month's iPad 2 product launch, Apple vice president Phil Schiller put up a Twitter post saying the white iPhone 4 would be available this spring and that it would be "a beauty."