For a while I’m following these rumors and combined them with some of my thoughts. Baseline of all of my thoughts was, that Apple in the past never reached for the bleeding edge technology, but more for the proven, state of the art technology nicely wrapped. Plus all speculation should be tied to the market Apple might be targeting.

The Basics

Baseline to all rumors is, that there will be some kind of Apple Tablet Device. There seems to be an outstanding order for 10 inch touch displays that need to be linked to a device. Price range for this device is estimated around US$ 800-1’000.

For this price point this would be no Macbook Tablet or anything similar. Apple won’t cannibalize Macbook sales.  So we should expect more of a iPhone / iPod Touch XL or DX kind of device. Comparing the capability of today’s netbooks to the new Apple device it must be capable of web browsing, instant messaging and email processing. The building blocks for this plus the touch interface are already available with the current iPhone / iPod Touch 3.0 OS. So no surprises here. The “Apple tax” could be justified with the touch interface, plus superb build quality and the Apple logo.

3G or 4G network besides WLAN ? 

This is a tough one. Depending on target market for this device my guess differs.

If Apple chose to go the traditional way, they might aim for the additional device (aka as Netbook) market. The potential buyer already has an existing WLAN infrastructure at home and for the mobile use a iPhone with tethering is available. This would indicate to no 3G or 4G built into the device.

More groundbreaking could be a totally different market. Target the device to all those consumers, that currently don’t have any direct device access to the Internet. Like e.g. my grandma. This would then definitely require a 3G or 4G network built into the device as these consumer typically don’t have a network infrastructure besides a phone at home. I suspect that this market would be significantly larger. As Apple would define this market segment from scratch, competitors couldn’t get in fast and Apple will play the “simple and easy to use” card. Competition would be unprepared. Plus, as the OS part would be owned by Apple, it will take time to build something comparable on other platforms.

If the device will have a carrier based network on board, this will be a 3G version. LTE would be too new for Apple and only available in very few locations.

Timing

This device will be clearly a leisure / home / private device. A release for this years Christmas season makes sense. Plus the old display rumors with a delivery in Fall indicate in the same direction. Probably we’ll see a similar staged approach as with the iPhone. First get a device out with no or limited third party app support. Parallel to the release a SDK will be published and an App store will open early next year. If Apple chose to enter the

Audio + Video

Some rumors indicate that there might be some extended multimedia functions for this device ranging from enhanced album features to streaming video.

The audio part makes sense for me. This device could be the audio repository at home, nicely selectable song collection enhanced with some web elements and additional album goodies. Playback either via headset, some add-on speaker unit for portable and outdoor use or through streaming to Apple Airport devices.  

I strongly doubt that there will be any kind of extended video or movie capabilities on top of the capabilities the iPod touch / iPhone has today. Storage requirements for a HD video collection would be too high. Additionally some rumors indicate that the major studios haven’t heard about such a device or plans of an extended service.

One more thing?

What else could Apple bring to the table for its tablet device?

• E-Book Reader: I doubt it, battery live plus display technology (non ePaper) are against this?
• Digital Picture Frame: Might be a clever marketing idea. Ingredients are at hand. And it gives the consumer a reason to put the device on display and show it off.
• Enhanced Mobile Me integration: Clearly yes.
• AppleTV controller on steroids: Could be, but I don’t see the market. First there needs to be a new version of AppleTV that includes TV recording, full 1080p playback.
• Games platform: It’s missing too many controls and as the device is too large for easy carry around it would be limited to home use. There other devices are well established plus the tablet input mode doesn’t provide too many interesting ways too interact. It might be, that Apple tries to reinvent the board game. But a 10 inch board game is in many cases too small.This kind of new board game might become interesting with a new target buyer type, that previously didn’t have a computer (again my grandma).

Final Vote

My final vote goes currently to a new consumer device in the category of Web-Tablets. The device will open a new large market segment for Apple without too much competition. For all gadget freaks I fear that this device won’t be overly exciting. But we’ll see….

Just my 2ct….. PTL