According to Shaw Wu, analyst at Kaufman Brothers, the announcement of the tablet next week may come with a catch: No shipments until June. Wu says there are still some last-minute technical issues to resolve, “including battery life and durability.” Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the new device would ship in March.
Wu expects the device to come in at
$999 and says rather than a touch-based Macbook Air, the new product
will be more of a “Super iPod Touch where video, gaming, Web
browsing, e-books, and the ability to run multiple apps would be
enhanced with the much larger screen.” In a statement that would be
shocking if true, CNN
Money indicates “the device will rely on Wi-Fi” rather than
3G. That would be a significant limitation, and could only be viewed
as a slap in AT&T's face. We can hope it means that Apple is
considering other carriers that might have better coverage and be
willing to offer new customers a lower price for the tablet in
exchange for a contract.
Regardless, expectations for the new device are running high, and Apple's stock has climbed to $215.04—near the all-time high of $215.59—in anticipation of its upcoming earnings report and the impact of the new addition to their lineup. Wu expects Apple to sell 1 million units per quarter.
SpaceTrucker
January 20, 2010 at 10:04am
Yeah or Apple is looking at making this a Netbook style device and isn't limiting the device to any one particular carriers service, like most Netbook developers are doing, you put in a card or hook up a USB device to it and get your signal from the provider of the network card, AT&T, T-Mobile, or whomever... Which makes more sense than just making it an oversized iPhoney. I still look for this to have a much more powerful operating system than just iPhone 4.0 as well.
