Apple has been in talks with American telecom operator Verizon looking to sell Apple-based products with contracts. Today AT&T has exclusive rights to Apple iPhone in the USA. Verizon wants a piece of the cake and hops to make ties to Apple with some sort of deal, specifically to sell iPhone in 2010. Rumors are going around that it is not the regular iPhone they are discussing, but two completely new products.
Apple has discussed iPhone Lite with Verizon, which is basically a smaller budget version of the current iPhone. The phone will be smaller physically and sport less features, but a SoC platform will enable Apple to cut manufacturing costs substantially.
The second device that Apple is said to have discussed with Verizon is a lot more interesting. It will be a tablet-like device that supports everything from HD video to music and pictures. The device has been dubbed “media pad” and will be capable of making calls over WiFi and IP telephony. At BusinessWeek they claim that Apple’s media pad will be smaller than the e-book reader Amazon Kindle, but at the same time use a larger display with touch technology. The result is supposed to be very impressive.
“We are talking about a device where people will say, ‘Damn, why didn’t we do this?’ Apple is probably going to define the damn category.”
Plausible design for Apple media pad
Everything is just rumors at this point, but a tablet like device could explain why Apple needs all those 10″ touch displays it ordered from Wintek. Don’t forget the salt, but Apple has surprised us in the past…
Apple’s netbook may in fact be a tablet?
