New Apple Tech

Want to know when Apple’s tablet will ship? It will ship when Steve Jobs decides it is ready to ship and not a moment before. Apple plans to announce a tablet by Jan. 19, 2010. As a chronic Applewatcher, my guess is that Apple engineers keep coming up with prototypes that Steve doesn’t like, probably based on component choices and necessary price points. Yes, even Apple knows that a product can simply do too little and cost too much.

The necessary components keep improving–the latest delay is supposedly for a new screen. (Ship date, was supposedly next March, is now supposedly second half of next year, but who’s counting the days anymore?)According to sources, Apple appears to be preparing to build as many as 1 million apple tablet computers per month. Assuming the company would need 5 or 6 weeks of inventory before going live, that suggests — barring production hiccups — a March or April 2010 launch. Rumor has it 1M-1.5M apple tablets will be sold, per quarter at an ASP of $1,000 and a corporate average net income margin of 22%, the tablet could contribute $0.25-$0.38 of incremental EPS per quarter.

The apple tablet will come in two editions, one with a webcam and one for educational use. Also, there will be one version equipped with 3G networking and one without. This would make the 3G model a bigger version of the iPhone, and the non-3G tablet a larger iPod Touch. The tablet will sport a higher resolution than the iPhone or iPod Touch screen: “Expect something like 5-6 times the resolution of an iPod Touch or iPhone screen (720p or thereabouts) and 7 times the touchable surface area,” writes iLounge. We can only speculate that Apple could integrate an e-book section into the iTunes Store into the apple tablet, giving it the potential to shake up the publishing industry.

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