New Rumors: Apple Tablet Coming This Fall

Financial Times lends even more weight to the rumor Apple Insider reignited last week concerning the giant iPod Touch/Apple tablet. And if this latest report is true, you won’t have to wait til next year to grab one. FT reports that Apple is in talks with record labels to create a new, interactive user experience with album downloads. To encourage consumers to purchase whole albums instead of just individual songs, FT claims that EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music Group are working with Apple to bundle liner notes, video clips, photos/art, and lyric sheets with albums. These features will all be interactive, allowing consumers to click through items they find interesting and “play songs directly from the interactive book without clicking back into Apple’s iTunes software.” This all sounds very enticing, and I’m excited to see how something like this will work. However, I think that the real interest and frenetic excitement is going to come from Apple giving consumers two things they’re been clamoring for a long time – a tablet and a netbook. Because, even without a keyboard, that’s what this device is shaping up to be. At the very bottom of the FT article there’s a slim little paragraph that runs thus:

Book publishers have been in talks with Apple and are optimistic about their services being offered with the new computer, which could provide an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle.

And there’s the other major thing about this device that is going to make consumers happy and (all) eReader makers nervous. Consumers don’t like spending money on unitaskers, though some will if a device does one task particularly well and is inexpensive. The Kindle is good at what it does, but even after the price drop it can’t really be called inexpensive. Some are predicting that the Apple tablet may cost up to $1,000, but I’m hoping for something in the $600 – $700 range. If so, users will get a touch netbook that connects to the Internet, plays and allows them to interact with their music, and will serve as a comfortable to hold and carry eReader — possibly one that allows the same kind of engaging interactivity as the album downloads (something Kindle isn’t particularly deft at) — for a fairly reasonable price. Amazon should watch its back. FT says that the device probably won’t have phone connectivity but will have Wi-Fi. If Apple is smart, they’ll enable the device for mobile broadband by next year but won’t tie it to any particular carrier at first. They’ll sell it with Qualcomm’s Gobi technology and allow the consumer to sign up with the carrier of their choosing. Though Apple Insider predicted a Q1 availability date, the Financial Times is reporting that Apple wants to have this device available by September for the holiday shopping season. No matter when this device comes out, it’s definitely going to change the netbook, tablet, and media-delivery landscape in a big way.