Apple may be working on an Apple iPhone Nano, if current rumours are to be believed. Although talk of an iPhone Nano has been around since as long ago as August 2006, nothing concrete has ever emerged about such a device...until now.

Actually, I say concrete, but there's nothing all that strong to go on. The current rumour is based on a patent application by iPhone accessory company Digital Lifestyle Outfitters (DLO), who've patented a design for a "telephonic portable digital media storage and playback device" (i.e. an iPhone dock). What's exciting the fanboys is that the patent contains a diagram showing a phone whose features are remarkably similar to an iPod Nano.

The speculation surrounds the purpose of such a patent. MacNN asks:

"Why else would a prominent iPod/iPhone accessories developer invent and patent this design and/or form-factor if it weren’t to be a coming reality?"

Well, as someone who holds a patent for work commissioned by Orange that never saw the light of day, I'll tell you...after the jump.

Companies frequently patent inventions they've no intention of putting into production for many many reasons, just some of which include:

• the just in case reason ("we don't want to build this, but we don't want our competitors building it either!")
• the look how clever we are reason (we have 10,000 useless patents, 9,000 more than our nearest competitor")
• the justify the spending reason ("look shareholders, these 10,000 useless patents show where all your cash has gone!")
• the patent swap reason ("we need your patents to create our cool device - how about we swap some of ours so we can use yours for free?")
• the competition by law reason ("you can license our patents that we can't afford to bring to market, and we'll take a cut of any profits you make, while not putting our shareholders' money at risk by actually building the thing!")

These are just some of the reasons that companies churn out millions of patents each year, but believe me there are many more. So the fact that DOL developed a patent for an iPod Nano device might just be an insurance policy in case Apple build such a device, rather than explicit proof that Apple are actually working on one.

In other words, the rumour is still just that - an unsubstantiated rumour fuelled by the wishes of a million and one hype-hungry fan-boys. Sorry about that!

[Source: MacNN]