Special Event for iOS 5, New MobileMe Announcements Rumored for April

New major announcements from Apple are but a month away, according to the latest rumors regarding the company’s short-term plans.

A report by German site Macerkopf.de claims (Google translate) that Apple’s forthcoming event will be held in early April - a mere month after the iPad 2 event held last week.

The event would be hosted at the company’s Cupertino, California headquarters, a “confident” source reportedly told the German site.

It would be unusual for Apple to hold two major events in just as many months.

However, knowing that Apple previewed iOS 4.0 in April last year, the timing couldn’t be better for previewing iOS 5 or iOS 5.0 (whichever dubbing Apple will prefer).

It would also give the world a taste of what’s to come in iPhone 5, which should arrive in two, or three months thereafter.

A MobileMe announcement is expected as well, the same source reportedly said.

Apple’s cloud-based service currently costs $99 a year, which hasn’t made it very popular since most of its functionality also comes in the form of several free solutions, like Dropbox.

But Apple is said to have big plans with the service, with multiple high-profile tech publications reporting in February that Apple was to turn MobileMe into a "locker" for personal data like photos, music and videos, and that everything would be streamable.

Based on similar reports, the tech media also expects Apple to unveil a voice-controllable MobileMe.

While Apple itself will have the final say as to whether all this information is accurate, the company may have already provided the first clue regarding its intentions with MobileMe.

Last month, Apple quietly discontinued boxed copies of MobileMe, with resellers reporting that both the MobileMe Single User product and the MobileMe Family Pack had been declared "End of Life."

Days later, a person identifying himself as an Apple retail staffer indicated that MobileMe had become online-only via a screenshot of his Apple Sales Web backend.