Apple's Schiller: White iPhone will debut in spring

The elusive white iPhone should finally surface this spring, at least according to someone who should know.

Responding to a question from 16-year-old Twitter user Eric Anderson asking how to get the white iPhone, Apple's vice president of worldwide product marketing, Phil Schiller, tweeted yesterday that the phone would be available this spring. And in Schiller's opinion, the new phone is a "beauty."

The tale of the white iPhone has been a long and mysterious one since last June's debut of the iPhone 4.

Pointing to a delay caused by manufacturing problems, Apple initially said the white version would be available in July. When July came, Apple was forced to push the launch date until later in 2010, admitting that the white handset was proving more "challenging to manufacture than we originally expected." Then in October, Apple announced yet another postponement, this time pushing back the phone's appearance until this coming spring.

Apple hasn't given any specific reasons for the ongoing series of delays, other than citing manufacturing challenges. Some sources claimed the issue has been due to light leaking out and affecting the camera, while others pointed to a mismatch in the color for the home button.

Whatever the cause, Apple may have resolved the problem--consider the iPad 2, which debuted this weekend in both white and black.

Schiller's tweet also comes on top of a report from an analyst with Concord Securities who said last week that Apple has solved the issues with the white iPhone, which he believes were due to a full-lamination problem that affected the coating of the phone. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo added that Apple is ramping up production this month to ship the white phone at the beginning of April.