Will the Apple tablet come dressed in polished aluminum?
There is a fairly creditable report out today indicating that the upcoming tablet computer will come dressed in a polished aluminum casing, cementing its relationship to the Apple MacBook lineup.
This is another case in which unnamed sources in the Apple supply chain have been cited as saying that the pieces necessary to assemble the Apple tablet have begun to ship to the device fabricator. Like a similar report that surfaced in the Wall Street Journal last week, this new Reuters report contains no names of sources, but still claims to quote from real people who are actually in the supply chain for the new Apple device. The report says that AVY Precision Technology Inc, a Taiwanese manufacturer of covers for electronic products, will begin production of the brushed aluminum cases in February.
The Reuters report includes a direct quote from an unnamed source within the case-supplying company, saying, “Production of the cases will begin in February, so everything points to a second-quarter launch right now. It doesn’t take that long for the company to assemble the PC together, but a second-quarter shipment date is what we’re looking at now.” The second quarter launch may be disconcerting to some consumers, given the spate of new tablet computer launches from Apple competitors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, but it is doubtful Apple is worried.
As we said in an article over the weekend, the tablet manufacturers that launched products at CES, which includes Hewlett-Packard Co, Microsoft Corp, Dell Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd, saw their news fall on relatively uninterested ears, while the rumors about the Apple tablet are catching the ardent attention of the tech press and consumers alike. It seems as if Apple created this marketplace, and even if they are late out of the gate with their product, the tablet market is still theirs to lose.
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