Bad glass delayed Apple tablet?
But it's coming, dear fanbois, it's coming
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While here in the States Apple-tablet rumors are churning the waters as turbulently as a pool of piranhas into which has been dumped a truckload of honey-dipped hamsters, over in the Far East the iWhatever's impending release is being treated as a fait accompli.
Even though, as reports suggest, Apple's device is months late.
Not slowed by the Christmas torpor that settled over most of the Western world, the busy folks at MacRumors turned up a web registration by Apple for the domain name iSlate.com, prompting some to assign that name to the device than now seems to be destined for its coming-out party on January 26.
However, the Taiwanese market-watchers at DigiTimes have more practical considerations on their minds than marketing matters - such as who is providing parts for the device, and who's building it.
In a report on Monday, DigitTimes' sources revealed that Foxconn will build the device, and that its Innolux division will be the primary display supplier for the 10-inch iWhatever. "Mass shipments" of the device will begin in March or April after Apple's expected January announcement.
Interestingly, the report also mentions that Apple "was forced to delay" shipping the iWhatever until 2010 due to problems with strength of the display, and that another Foxconn subsidiary, G-Tech Optoelectronics, had been brought in to solve that problem.
This tidbit might explain what Apple missed the 2009 holiday shopping season, and why the iWhatever was originally rumored to have appeared in fall 2009. Possibly that was Apple's plan, but the tablet's display technology wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
The also-rumored 7-inch model wasn't mentioned in Monday's report, but back in March DigiTimes also reported that Wintek - mentioned today as a second supplier of 10-inch panels - would be the supplier for what it then referred to as "Apple's new netbook." Perhaps Wintek is handling the 7-inchers and Innolux the 10-inchers.
But then again, Wintek was mentioned in July as being the supplier of a 9.7-inch touch screen for the iWhatever. Rumors are easy. What counts are parts orders and shipment schedules - and maybe more information might leak out at Innolux's shareholders meeting, set for January 6 in Miaoli, Taiwan. Stay tuned. ®
COMMENTS
Bad glass you say?
That'd be from the same Apple who can't manage to get their 27 incher to arrive uncracked?
How odd, you might think that there's a QA problem. i couldn't possibly comment...
(snigger)
Jolly good!
I don't really buy the notion of delays but I do buy into the notion of Apple quality control and quality assurance.
Waiting a little bit longer for Apple to get it right is totally worthwhile and ain't no doubt about it: Apple seems to have been catapulted into "doing it first, getting it right, getting it mainstream" and there is no real harm in that.
It will be interesting to see how the financial market in terms of Apple's share prices goes.
Equally there ain't no doubt about it that mobile comms, information communications technologies, the cloud, software as a service, ... is all queing up for the next big thing probably at commercial and personal levels.
So ... in that sense it bodes well for the Apple to take its time, get it right, get the quality and user experience right and do an iPhone on the iWhatever.
Wonder how much it will cost though and what the tie ins to services might cost.
On the downside I hope Apple avoids the iDisk, Mobile Me stuff that impacted less than positively.
Errr... @AC
"So that'd be why the iPhone needed to wait until the 3GS until it was actually a good phone by modern smartphone tech-spec standards? Except it's UI, which was better than pretty much any other phone."
Congratulations for totally missing the point of why the iPhone is successful! As far as the average consumer goes:
"modern smartphone tech-specs" = Geeky pissing contest
UI - whether you can actually make use of any of the features included in the phone.
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