During a recent interview with World Business Satellite via TV-Tokyo, a Foxconn recruiter said the company is hiring 18,000 new employees to help manufacture the next iPhone. The representative went on to say that he believes the device will go on sale around June.

The conversation can be seen here (starts around the 7:10 mark) although the spoken language is Chinese and the translation is said to be in Japanese. Note that the recruiter says it "seems" like it will go on sale around June; not that it is a for-sure thing. As we all know, nothing is solid regarding Apple rumors.

Furthermore, from the video it appears that the camera is off in the distance. It's possible that the recruiter didn't know they were being filmed and was simply spouting off inaccurate material to try to get new workers in the door.

A summer launch would mean that the iPhone 4S would have only been the current generation handset for around eight or nine months. This seems somewhat unlikely but then again, most didn't expect Apple to break the traditional yearly cycle as they did with the iPhone 4S so really, anything is possible.

Of course this isn't the first we have heard of a summer iPhone 5 launch. In February CNET ran a story suggesting the next gen handset could see the light of day at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The new phone is widely expected to include either a 4-inch or larger display with a wider and longer form factor.