Apple’s tablet ready in March, menace for Kindle

11th December, 2009 by adina
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Apple’s tablet is closer and closer to reach the market, as analysts say. Some investigations into Apple’s supply network reveal that the tablet is very likely to enter mass production in February next year and be launched in March or April. It seems that about one million devices will be made every month. The presence of Apple’s tablet on the market is expected to be a heavy blow against Amazon’s Kindle, as the same analysts believe.

Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner estimates that Apple could sell between one million and 1.5 million devices quarterly when the price is about $1,000. Some people expect the tablet to be priced at about $800 or even less while including 3G and being subsidized by a carrier. Reiner thinks that more important might be an e-book publishing deal coming attached to the device. Citing American sources that claim a more attractive deal than Amazon’s Kindle Store will be promoted by Apple, Reiner says Apple will take only 30 percent of the revenues and leave the remaining 70 percent to the publishers, as it does with iTunes and the App Store and will not require exclusivity. Amazon is known to be very greedy, as it punishes non-exclusives by increasing its part to 50 percent. Apple is expected not to play favourites in its content deals or advertising, which was forbidden for the Kindle even with newspapers or magazines.

Some rumours reveal that Apple has been negotiating with print publishers and will stress e-book reading on future tablet devices even if their hardware is continuing to emphasize web browsing, media playback and some other features inherited from the iPod touch and the iPhone. Apple official Steve Jobs has publicly dismissed e-readers but there many cases when denying interest for a certain category of devices, such as portable video or cell phones, was only a strategy for Apple to launch such kind of products when it believed to be able to provide a better device.

Reiner also said that an Apple tablet may be a better solution for education, especially when using a hybrid stylus/touch interface that would simplify note-taking or quickly drawing diagrams.


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