Mega-retailer Wal-Mart will join the iPhone 4's coming-out party on June 24.

Wal-Mart has carried iPhones in the past, but the launch of the "biggest leap since the original iPhone" will be the first time that the Destroyer of Small-Town America™ has participated in the now-traditional get-in-line-with-your-fellow-fanbois early adopter ecstasies.

This news comes from Cnet, which also reminds us of the rumors that the iPhone 4 will be available at Radio Shack and Best Buy, to boot — not to mention, of course, AT&T and Apple's own brick-and-mortar retail stores.

It's likely that Apple's decision to share the first-day festivities has less to do with its desire to make the buying experience of its latest and greatest less harrowing for its most ardent fans, and more to do with its confidence that the iPhone 4 will be a world-beater, and that Cupertino wants to make it available in as many outlets as humanly possible.

Apple sold 8.75 million iPhones in its fiscal quarter ending March 27 — and that was during a period when the next-gen iPhone was clearly on the horizon, a time when iPhone sales have declined during past model-change cycles. Now that the iPhone 4 is imminent, we'd say that Apple's pre-release exuberance is not irrational. ®