UPDATE: iPhone 5 officially launched at Apple press event, 4G in the UK through EE

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Okay, so we pretty much know that Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 5 on Wednesday evening, but now we have official, official confirmation from the Cupertino-based company, thanks to a slip up on its own search results on Apple.com. 

Eagle-eyed readers of 9to5mac.com have spotted that searching for iPhone 5 on Apple's own site brings up a number of search results for the phone, even though Apple hasn't as announced it officially yet. 

Those search results include a listing to the page:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/09/12Apple-Introduces-iPhone-5.html

and

http://www.apple.com/legal/rfexposure/iphone5,1/zh-Hant/

Neither link works of course, but it shows Apple is readying itself to push out the press release after the announcement of its new phone later today. 

Apple is holding it's event at 6pm UK time. Pocket-lint will be in attendance. 

If you can't wait that long, check out our When is the new iPhone 5 coming? The rumours, details and release date feature, and all iPhone 5 news via our dedicated iPhone 5 hub.

Apple isn't the first company to fall foul of its own website spilling the beans. Microsoft's website jumped the gun at E3, the gaming trade show, for the launch of the Kinect in 2011 - an hour before the event was about to start.  

UPDATE Oh dear, more playing by Pocket-lint with the Apple search page revealing more products that Apple is waiting to launch. We can reveal that Apple will also announce a new iPod nano, and iPod touch, and a new version of iTunes as seen in the search results we've just grabbed from the Apple.com site.

And the searches continue. Now we've found a page called iPhone LTE, confirming the iPhone 5 will have LTE, something that we suggested would be the case in August, but now apparently confirmed by the listing.