Although the company will not publicly confirm the arrival of a second iPhone, Apple watchers have concluded that a new version will be introduced June 9, the opening day of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Apparently in preparation for the event, stocks of the existing iPhone have been dwindling in the last month.

Although AT&T stores still have phones in stock, according to a company spokesman, the supply has largely dried up in Apple's retail outlets, and the phones are no longer available through the company’s online store. Apple may be trying to avoid the anger it faced last September when it cut the iPhone's price by $200 just two months after it went on sale, making early buyers feel cheated. Mr. Jobs offered those customers a $100 store credit. Cutting down on supply means fewer angry buyers when their new phone is suddenly obsolete. “You can say what you want about Steve Jobs, but he's learning from his mistakes,” said Roger Entner, a senior vice president at IAG Nielsen, a market research firm. "They are cleaning out the supply channel." Even as supplies shrink, Apple has been signing a series of deals with cellphone network providers around the world. On Tuesday the cellular operator TeliaSonera said it would offer the iPhone in seven countries, including Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The only major countries without an iPhone distribution agreement are Japan, Russia and China.

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Both Mr. Jobs and Randall L. Stephenson, the chief executive of Apple's partner AT&T, have promised a new iPhone model this year that would run on a high-speed wireless data network. AT&T is building such a network, which uses technology known as 3G and is intended to support a range of new applications, including mobile digital video. The company said last week that the network would be largely finished by the end of June. But analysts say faster downloads may not be enough to touch off a new wave of consumer interest in the iPhone.

"Subscribers don’t care what the radio interface of their cellular phone is," Mr. Snyder said. If he is to rekindle the excitement that greeted the iPhone's introduction, Mr. Jobs is likely to need something else. So far, he has been successful in hiding any surprise features from the dozens of Web sites and bloggers that track the company's new products. There has been speculation about a higher-resolution camera, possible support for digital video recording, a slightly bulkier and more curved case, and the addition of a global positioning system receiver that would allow new Web services tied to a person’s location.