“Conversations with yet another key component supplier indicates that production for iPhone 5 will begin in September,” Avian’s analysts said in a note. “This is consistent with Avian findings in the supply chain in recent months and we believe the consensus view is moving towards this scenario.”

Certainly seems that way. As I’ve reported here before, Apple doesn’t plan to unveil a new iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which this year will be largely software-focused. And increasingly, I’m hearing speculation about the company possibly commandeering its annual September media event to launch the device instead. Which seems plausible. Buzz-wise, the iPod has been subsumed by the iPhone. And the continuing evolution of the iPod line isn’t nearly as exciting as it once was; just look over the hardware announced at last year’s fall music event: A new Shuffle that looked a lot like its second generation predecessor, a smaller multi-touch nano, a thinner iPod touch and a smaller Apple TV. Pretty staid stuff for Apple.

And we’re likely to see more of the same at this year’s event. Let’s face it, once you’ve perfected the iPod the way Apple has, there’s only so much you can do to refine it, and we’re at the point now where “thinner” and “smaller” aren’t the impressive achievements they were a few years back.

So why not spice things up by throwing the iPhone into the mix? Doing so would not only give Apple a few more months to prep the device and the services rumored to launch alongside it, it would re-energize one of the company’s most important annual events and introduce the iPhone 5 right as we head into the busy holiday shopping season.

Palm lost about half a billion dollars in market value last week after the company warned of a nasty revenue shortfall. And it seems that was only the beginning of what may prove to be a long and painful decline. Investors brutalized Palm (PALM) Thursday, slashing nearly five percent from its share price, dragging it to $5.98 from $6.26.

$5.98 per share. A year ago Palm’s stock was trading at $18.09. Now, analysts like Matthew Thornton at Avian Securities are saying they see it falling to $4–at least in the short term.

Lousy sales of the company’s webOS smartphones have clearly undermined Palm’s efforts to regain its former glory. With the mood on The Street this dark, you’ve got to wonder if anyone believes that’s even possible anymore.

UPDATE: Here’s a bit of good news for Palm. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week, the company plans to release its webOS Plug-in Development Kit, a set of tools that may spur development or more, and higher quality, third party apps.

In fact, as Avian Securites research chief Avi Cohen asserts in a note this morning, mainstream forecasts for PC unit growth in 2010 could be too low. Cohen notes that IDC, for instance, is projecting 10 percent growth. But he contends that “normalized” PC growth is 13 percent-15 percent, and points out that growth in the year following a Microsoft (MSFT) OS upgrade tends to be closer to 20 percent.

Cohen thinks a variety of factors are setting the stage for a strong year for the PC component stocks:

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With its strength in Ethernet, 3Com (COMS) gives HP a major piece of the pie, but it still needs a few more slices if it wants to be a one-stop-shop for data centers. One such slice it might go after next is application acceleration, said Catharine Trebnick, a senior research analyst with Avian Securities.

Application acceleration appliances speed up the delivery of programs from a data center to the people using it, using methods such as balancing the workload across machines.

Prior to HP’s announcement yesterday, many analysts speculated publicly traded F5 Networks Inc. (FFIV), a leader in this space, was a likely acquisition target, but most now have soured on that idea.

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Motorola’s explanation for the shortfall? The company doesn’t seem to have one, although it says it’s looking forward to launching a more “differentiated” handset lineup later this year. During a conference with analysts, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said the company plans to bring a number of devices running Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile OS to market in the months ahead.

“We will have two Android devices by the holidays,” said Jha. “And we have plans for more devices in the first quarter of 2010.” These will get the company “back in the game in smartphones,” Jha added, noting that most of the devices the company plans to launch next year will fall under that category. “Our core strategy really is to take Android as low down on the feature-phone tier as we possibly can,” he said.

For Motorola, which has been losing money and market share for longer than anyone cares to remember, that’s a wise move. A killer Android handset at a reasonable price would do much to carry the company toward its hoped-for turnaround. But as Avian Securities analyst Matt Thornton notes, developing such a device is no easy task when a number of other handset makers are building Android devices as well.

“Motorola made the right choice and the only choice with Android,” Thornton said. “It remains to be seen how Motorola will differentiate itself from its competitors.”

Probably not. And that could be a problem.

The higher the current rally takes the semiconductor stocks–the SMH, the Semiconductor HOLDRS, is up 18.5 percent over the last seven sessions–the more you can expect the Street to dig into the question of whether there has been any real change in demand beyond inventory restocking. Auriga USA analyst Daniel Berenbaum took up the question yesterday; he says signs of true improving end demand are scant.

Today, Avi Cohen, head of research at Avian Securities, takes a look, and reaches the same conclusion.

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Thornton trolls through various stats from the filing, including the fact that U.S. sales, which are 58 percent of revenue, were down nine percent in Q3 from the prior quarter, though up 62 percent year over year.

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Avian analyst Matthew Thornton cut his rating on the stock to Neutral from Positive. He says a survey of U.S. retail stores and discussions with management lead him to conclude that “smartphone units and sales are likely to come in below expectations for the next several quarters.” He also thinks the company will exit the May 2009 fiscal year with a much lower run rate for its Centro line, putting more pressure on new Palm OS products to meet or exceed expectations in fiscal 2010, “leaving less room for upside.” He cuts his price target on the stock to $5 from $9.

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Avian Securities analyst Avi Cohen issued a note today headlined “We Still Hate AMD.”

Cohen notes that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) shares have been up in recent weeks on positive news flow about better performance and more competitive product offerings from its ATI division as well as some analyst comments suggesting possible share gains in servers and notebooks due to product delays at Intel.

“While we agree that AMD is likely to improve its product offerings in graphics,” he writes, “we disagree with the view that AMD is likely to gain meaningful shares in servers and notebooks. We are actually more inclined to short AMD on rallies given the new found optimism.”

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