The Royal Bank of Canada is maintaining its bearish near-term outlook on shares of Apple, claiming that although consumer interest in a new version of the iPhone remains healthy, sales of the new device are unlikely to provide the company with the same boost seen during the transition from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G.

In a report to clients Monday, analyst Mike Abramsky laid out some pretty obvious predictions for the future of Apple’s smartphone business. Specifically, he believes the company “will announce an updated iPhone 3G ‘Pro’” at its annual developers conference slated for June 8-12, with a release to follow in July.

Among his feature predictions for the new model is a new 3.2 megapixel camera, better battery life for video playback, “a faster 3G chipset (HSUPA vs current HSDPA), improved graphics processor, video recording, more memory (16GB/32GB)” and an enclosure that’s one-tenth of a millimeter thinner than the one employed by the iPhone 3G.

A proprietary survey by RBC’s ChangeWave market research division conducted this month found “healthy pent-up demand” for a new iPhone, with 20% of the 4,300 respondents saying they’d consider buying a 16GB iPhone 3G ‘Pro’ (11%) priced at $199 or 32GB iPhone 3G Pro (9%) priced at $299. Another 8 % expressed interest in the current iPhone 3G if it were to be priced at $99.

However, Abramsky told clients the update won’t be enough to boost the iPhone’s momentum above current levels and is only likely to sustain the touchscreen handset’s current market traction. In support of this theory, he cited about a half dozen reasons, namely that the expected jump in internet download speeds is unlikely to be as dramatic as last year’s switch from EDGE to 3G.