Apple will announce the iPhone on Monday, website Gizmodo has claimed. It cites no sources and provides no details, but a senior staffer guarantees the announcement - which he says was unexpected - will happen, for what that's worth...

Assuming, for the moment, it isn't a blatant attempt to generate traffic for the site - the story's too terse to warrant a link, by the way - why might Apple announce the iPhone on Monday, seven days before Christmas and less than a month before CEO Steve Jobs takes to the stage for his annual launch-fest, the Macworld Expo keynote?

Well, if Apple can ship the iPhone, it could well be hoping to grab the kind of headlines Sony and Nintendo have had, respectively, over their PlayStation 3 and Wii launches. It's the time of year for parties and long, boozy lunches, and we hacks would like nothing more than an easy 'iPhone sells out across US' story while our waistlines detumesce.

A Google search on 'iPhone' will reveal the sheer weight of web posts about the as-yet-unannounced handset, so there's clearly plenty of interest out there - it's why we're writing this, after all - and maybe Apple reckons it needs that good, solid sales story that a last-minute pre-Christmas dash for iPhones would generate.

Would a Macworld Expo announcement, alongside a range of other Apple products, have the same impact? Probably not.

It's going to make for an interesting Monday... or a very red face for at least one Gizmodo poster. ®