Well now here’s an interesting bit of gossip to do with Apple and their quarterly performance that firmly puts the blame for under performing and slower sales of the iPhone 4 on the speculation that Apple was going to release the iPhone 5 rather than the iPhone 4S.

According to the guys over at Slash Gear, by way of Apple, Apple CEO Tim Cook is placing the blame for under performing fourth quarter results, which didn’t live up to analyst expectations on “rampant speculation later in the quarter” that pushed iPhone 5 rumours to fever pitch and thus resulted in lower sales of the iPhone 4.

The reason lower sales of the iPhone 4 happened is apparently because customers waited for the next generation iPhone to make its debut. Personally I would have thought most of the potential additional iOS customers would have waited anyway, but there you go.

“Apple CEO Tim Cook blames iPhone 5 rumors for underperforming quarter and slower iPhone 4 sales. “The reduction happened largely in the back half of the quarter as speculation hit extreme highs,” Cook says. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer later reiterated that the “biggest impact was the rumors, which were very pervasive.”

Having said that, Apple isn’t doing too badly with the company selling 17.07 million iPhone units in the quarter, 11.12 million Apple iPad units, 4.89 million Macs, and 6.62 million iPods, so they shouldn’t have too much to complain about.

The figures show that iPhone growth was up 21 percent from the same quarter in the previous year, while the Apple iPad saw a growth of 166 percent year on year, while Mac growth was up 26 percent from the year previous, but the iPod saw a slump of 27 percent from the year previous.

But all in all I’d say the Apple coffers are swelling like they have never done before wouldn’t you?

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