Fake internal memo claiming “iPhone to be delayed” sends Apple stock plunging

Engadget posted a story Wednesday morning at 11:49am ET claiming that Apple was about to announce another delay of Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, as well as a delay for the iPhone, perhaps the most hyped gadget of all time.

Engadget said "This one doesn't bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to... October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January,"

and panic ensued as expected. Apple's stock immediately plunged 2.2 percent as investors contemplated another product delay at Apple.

But around 20 minutes after the original post, Engadget started to update its story. First, the site said it had heard back from Apple PR that there was no delay. Then the full story started to emerge.

Based on the update on Engadget's website, it seems an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees and forwarded to Engadget around 9am CT today saying that Apple issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January.

About an hour and a half after that e-mail went out, a second e-mail was sent, this time officially from Apple saying the first e-mail was a fake, and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed. Engadget then updated its headline as "False alarm: iPhone delayed until October, Leopard delayed again until January."

This hasn't amused the commenter's on Engadget and Apple investor boards. The words used cannot be posted here due to the profanity used but It's safe to say that there's some very unhappy Apple shareholders out there today. Apple's stock recovered as the full story emerged, but was still down slightly in afternoon trading.

Engadget said that the e-mail was forwarded by "a trustworthy source," and definitely sent from within Apple's internal e-mail system. "Presumably Apple is now on the hunt for whomever was able to spoof its internal email system," it said in a later version of the post that used a strike-through font effect on the text of the original report.

They seem to have gone on a further defensive to ensure there are no legal implications due to this escapade by reiterating "this was an ACTUAL email distributed within Apple's internal email system to Apple employees."

I guess this past one week can be dubbed as the week of iPhone rumors since its announcement in January.

Other iPhone rumors in the past week:

iPhone from AT&T to offer subscription music, Satellite Radio, on-demand streaming video??
Stan Sigman's iPhone giveaway video has it been tampered?

[image courtesy Financialcontent.com]