Apple's Big Summer 2012 Product Will Be…

With the iPhone 5 an unlikely candidate for a summer release, speculation has shifted to what we can expect from Apple's next major release.

It won't be a product from French designer Phillippe Starck. And it probably won't be the company's $10,000 TV set.

But if not those items, what could Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) possibly release?

"I think around this timeframe -- generally around back-to-school -- there is a refresh with the Mac line," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu told Benzinga. "Some of the Mac products are about a year old, so it makes a lot of sense to have a Mac refresh."

Wu also expects to see an iPod refresh. "You look at the iPod business, it has been declining, but that's more of a function of the non-iPod Touch products," said Wu. "For example, the Nano and the Classic and the Shuffle [are declining]. Those are under a lot of pressure. That capability is getting absorbed by the iPhone, among others. But the iPod Touch is actually doing quite well. That's growing."

Wu believes that the iPod Touch's success is partially due to Apple's marketing strategy to reposition it as a gaming device. "The iPod Touch -- it's essentially the iPhone without the phone," he said. "Customers are buying it as a game machine. Apple has repositioned it as such."

The other thing, Wu said, is that consumers with other phones are turning to the iPod Touch to get their Apple fix.

"Let's say they carry a BlackBerry or an Android, but they want the functionality of an iPhone but they don't want to get an iPhone, they can get an iPod Touch," Wu explained. "In fact, that's what a lot of people are doing. Obviously [Apple would] love to have you as an iPhone customer. But they don't have to -- they'll sell you something else. They can sell you an iPod Touch, an iPad, a Mac. They could sell you all three! That's the beauty of the Apple model versus these other players."

Apple TV and Apple's TV

During our discussion, I asked Wu if he thought that the branding of Apple's set-top box -- currently referred to as Apple TV -- could hurt Apple's entry into television manufacturing.

"At this point I don't think it matters," Wu replied. "We'll have to see what happens down the road. As we said in the past, what's holding up a real Apple television to ship is content partnerships, more than anything….and that's really hard to predict. It's total guesswork. It's whatever the studios will decide. Right now, they're frankly in no rush."

Wu said that the thing we need to watch for is cord-cutting. "If more and more subscribers cut the cord, that may force them to work with Apple," he warned. "Right now it hasn't reached the degree to where it's alarming."

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