Could it be? According to Japanese blog Macotakara, Apple is heading toward a 2012 release of both a 4G LTE iPhone and iPad on NTT DoCoMo, the predominant mobile phone operator in Japan.

If we have a fall arrival of the iPhone 5, it would make sense as it would've been twelve months since the release of the iPhone 4S. NTT DoCoMo's president, Koyoyuki Tsujimura and vice president Takashi Yamada have allegedly met with Apple CEO Tim Cook in mid-November to discuss the deal.

At the meeting, they reportedly "agreed in principle" to sell both the next-generation iPhone and iPad, and the executives apparently agreed to "the rules of the game", including order commitment. Apple have shot down talk of the 4G LTE chipsets before, deeming them not fully optimized for low power consumption on mobile devices. Apple's chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer said on an April 2011 earnings call:

The first generation of LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make.