Apple will do everything it can to make the Apple iPhone a massive success. This will, according to a new rumour, delay the work of launching a new Apple iPod model by at least six months.

Speculations on whether Apple will launch a widescreen Apple iPod have been around for a while. But those who are waiting to upgrade their Apple iPod to get the widescreen version will have to wait a bit longer, perhaps even until early 2008, AppleInsider writes.

The forthcoming widescreen, sixth-generation Apple iPod is expected to have many similarities to the Apple iPhone. As a result, Apple doesn't want to risk the new iPod diluting the worth and sales of the iPhone music player/mobile phone.

Apple is also rumoured to be planning to swap the built-in 1.8-inch hard drive in Apple iPods for NAND flash memory. The benefits of a flash memory would be improved battery life and lower weight, but the storage capacity would go down to 32GB from 80GB.