New Apple tablet with Intel Atom processor inside?

If you’re a fan of things techie such as your netbook or iPhone, you might have caught on to the buzz about Apple. Here’s a company that without saying a word can manage to get bloggers and tech lovers in a froth. Why not?

Apple sets the standard on style and out of the box thinking. Who would’ve imagined a platform that created the sale of additional applications to the tune of about one billion? It’s hard to imagine that Apple would’ve known they’d sell or give away so many applications for the iPhone.

Along comes the buzz.

First, I’m with all the other tech watchers out there and I believe Apple will announce something within a few days of this report. Everyone wants to hit it on the head and say, it’s a tablet computer! Thing is, tablet computers aren’t that big of a deal, but neither were mp3 players or cell phones – until Apple came along. So here they stand a chance to add some rather necessary juice to the whole tablet business. Why? It’s an under performing segment of notebook computing. According to Gartner, a tech industry analysis company, netbooks have outsold smart phones since the last quarter of 2008. The big deal here, is for Apple to find another avenue to continue to grow it’s applications business.

So what could do that? Another iPhone? The so called iSlate?

The bottom line here is that netbooks and their ilk make a decent profit in the hands of standard PC guys, but what say you put that in the hands of Apple and they convince their customers that instead of paying $200 for a smaller than average notebook PC (netbook), they instead pay $500 or so? Suddenly, a product that was probably profitable at the lower price becomes even more of a money maker.

Look at Apple product pricing, on the low end you have the iPod Touch at $200, then the iPhone at $300, and finally any of their PCs at $1400 or more. They need a middle ground. Think of a product at less than a thousand, but more than an iPhone and you arrive at that precious mid point that Apple’s ignored for ages.

Like in the past, Apple will create the buzz now and roll the product out two quarters later. Whatever they plan to announce, a touch like product would be cool. A product that uses the iPhone infrastructure would be smart. A device that rounds out their portfolio, but keeps their profitability high would more of the same genius they’re known for.

So how does this tie into Intel? Well, in December they announced a new family of Atom processors and one of which was a dual core device. According to Intel, the “D510 is for entry-level desktop PCs is a dual core Atom processor with 1meg L2 cache and a 15-watt total kit TDP including chipset. The new chips all run at 1.66GHz.” Such a low power high performing device could find no better home than in a new Apple smart book of some kind.

Whatever the news, it’s sure been fun to watch all the buzz about the new Apple device. Who knows what it’ll be, but the world will soon know. Then we’ll all sit waiting for the next buzz.