January 4th, 2010
You may well have heard this about 100 times already (there are 524 stories listed on Google just dated January 4), but today’s Wall Street Journal confirmed that Apple plans to announce its long-rumored tablet iPhone-variant towards the end of this month, and will likely begin shipping in March. Although the pricing is not known, nor the features, that did not prevent Barclays issuing “a report last week that it expects Apple to sell at least 1 million tablets a year.” Don’t ‘ya just love analysts? Their confidence makes me humble.
I also enjoyed Adrian Kingsley-Hughes summation in his ZDNet blog: “Apple tablet (iTablet? iSlate?) rumors are flying left, right and center. On top of that I’m being asked questions about the device that given the information that we know for sure about the device (almost nothing) I can’t possibly answer…”
Clearly oblivious to Barclays’ recent insight, former Google Inc. senior executive Lee Kai-fu wrote on his blog on December 29, 2009: “Apple in January plans to launch an Apple Tablet, priced at $ 1000 U.S. dollars below. According to informed friend said that this Tablet looks like a large iPhone, there are 10.1-inch multi-touch screen, and amazing user interface, 3D graphics, virtual keyboard, video conferencing, e-books, Internet this and other functions. Steve Jobs will launch the product in January. The most striking: Apple expected the first year of output at close to 10 million!” (Translation by Google.)
I’m looking forward to the product. Should brighten a winter’s day. The iPhone is easy to fit in my pocket but I hate reading on it.
Following up on January 5: An interesting commentary in BusnessWeek By Ben Kunz called “Five Ways Apple’s Tablet May Change the World.”