Apple, the American multinational technology company, is reportedly working on the iPhone 6C, a new four-inch smartphone that will be launched early next year.

Value Walk reports that the new iPhone 6C handset will be an extended version of the previous iPhone 5S handset, which was released on September 20, 2013.

Mac World UK also reports that the iPhone 6C will be released within the first quarter of next year, according to an analysis by the Jefferies Group. And unlike the original iPhone 5S, it is expected to sport a metallic rather than a plastic body.

"Apparently the new iPhone 6c will have a metal casing, rather than the plastic case of the current 'c' model," Mac World UK confirmed.

"This is according to Jefferies analyst Ange Wu, who claims that Foxconn and Hon Hai will benefit from this metal casing business, causing shares of Foxconn to surge." MacWorld added.

In addition, rumors suggest that the new iPhone 6C handset will be consistent with previous models in terms of its design. Apple has yet to confirm these rumors.

The previous Apple iPhone 5S sports a four-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD display screen with a 640 x 1136, and protected by Corning Gorilla Glass and oleophobic coating.

It runs on the old iOS 7 mobile operating system and can be upgraded up to the latest iOS 8.4. It has an 8 mega pixel rear camera and a 1.2 mega pixel front-facing camera. Under the hood is the Apple A7 chipset alongside dual core 1.3 GHz Cyclone and PowerVR G6430. It has 1 GB of RAM and up to 6$ GB internal memory storage.

The iPhone, a convergence of an Internet-enabled smartphone and iPod, runs on Apple's iOS mobile operating system. The most recent iPhone models are the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which were unveiled on September 9, 2014.

Besides the iPhone, Apple's best-known hardware products include the Mac line of computers, the iPod media player, the iPad tablet computer and the Apple Watch smartwatch.