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Apple Tablet rumors have exploded in the past few days with reports suggesting that Apple may introduce the device as early as January. A New York Times Blog post by Nick Bilton adds a few tantalizing tidbits about the upcoming device.

As we've known, Bilton reports that Apple has been working on a tablet on-and-off for many years but never felt to be good enough to go to market. Some of the previous technology had already been adapted for the iPhone launch. It seems, however, that Apple has finally gotten the tablet to the point to launch to the market, and according to a current senior employee at Apple, Steve Jobs is said to be "extremely happy with the new tablet."

Furthermore, another source told Bilton, "You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet." No other details are offered as to what this interaction might be. Apple, of course, holds many patents on multi-touch technology and has been expected to apply it to their upcoming tablet. Implementing more advanced gestures have been considered possible, though we're not sure if this would be considered a surprising interaction.

The Financial Times reports that it has received word that Apple has scheduled a special media event for Tuesday, January 26th in San Francisco. The event will reportedly be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, site of the company's music-focused events held each fall in recent years.

The company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January, according to people familiar with the plans.

Apple is expected to use the venue to make a major product announcement on Tuesday, January 26th. Both YBCA and Apple declined to comment.

The topic of next month's rumored media event is currently unknown, although rumors have been flying today about Apple's tablet device plans, with a report claiming that Apple has asked several iPhone application developers to prepare their apps for demonstration on a larger screen device sometime next month.

Google today announced that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has requested additional information on the company's proposed acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob as the regulatory agency continues to investigate the appropriateness of the deal.

As we said when we announced the deal, we don't see any regulatory issues with this deal, because the rapidly growing mobile advertising space is highly competitive with more than a dozen mobile ad networks.

That said, we know that closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google's success, and we've been talking to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the past few weeks. This week we received what's called a "second request," which means that the FTC is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal.

Apple and AdMob had reportedly met in the weeks before the deal with Google was announced, as Apple was apparently considering making its own offer to acquire AdMob. AdMob is currently the world's largest mobile advertising company, and thus a major player in the iPhone development community.

Silicon Alley Insider reports that Apple has approached certain app developers to ask them to prepare for a demo scheduled for next month. Notably, Apple has requested that the developers prepare their applications to run in "full screen" mode rather than limiting display to the iPhone and iPod touch's 320 x 480 pixels.

Apple is preparing to show off a new, larger mobile device with a higher resolution display in January -- probably a version of the Apple tablet we've been hearing about for months -- according to a plugged-in source in the mobile industry.

Apple has been telling some app makers to prepare apps for a demo next month, according to this source. "They've told select developers that as long as they build their apps to support full screen resolution -- rather than a fixed 320x480 -- their apps should run just fine," our source says.

The source notes that only the demo will occur in January, with a device launch scheduled for sometime in the future to allow other developers to modify their applications to support the new device and to allow Apple to generate excitement and anticipation ahead of the launch as it did with the original iPhone.

Apple tablet rumors have been flying fast and furious lately, with rumors of a February production ramp for a March or April release leading to reports of a possible January announcement. Exact specs of the tablet remain unknown, with long-standing rumors of a 10" display being joined in recent weeks with increasing claims of a 7" display, possibly indicating plans for multiple models of the new device.

The hype is continuing to build around Google's highly-anticipated Android-based phone, dubbed the "Nexus One". Engadget today reveals draft specs for the forthcoming device, as well as information that it is scheduled to launch on January 5th and will initially be available only by "invitation".

Our tipster doesn't have information on how those invites are going to be determined, other than the fact that it's Google doing the inviting -- if we had to guess, current registered developers are a strong possibility -- but the good news, we suppose, is that T-Mobile will apparently sell the phone directly at some to-be-determined point in the future.

The Nexus One reportedly offers a similar 3.7-inch, high-resolution OLED screen to that found in the Motorola Droid, as well as a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with flash and the Android 2.1 operating system. Onboard storage is pegged at 512 MB of flash and 512 MB of RAM, and the device supports microSD cards with a 4 GB card included.

Gizmodo was able to get a brief hands-on experience with the Nexus One, finding it "long and silky and natural" with a "damn good" screen, even better than that of the Droid. The Nexus One was also found to be snappier than the iPhone and Droid in loading Web pages. But rather than comparing the overall Nexus One to the iPhone 3GS, Gizmodo chooses to pit it against the Droid, noting that "it's still an Android phone".

If Google's planning on releasing this phone as their official Google phone, it'll certify them as the premium Android phone brand out there right now. Even though it doesn't have a hardware keyboard, it basically beats the hell out of the Droid in every single task that we threw at it.

DigiTimes reports that OmniVision Technologies has secured orders from Apple for 5-megapixel camera sensors destined for the next-generation iPhone. Sources report that the OmniVision is expected to supply Apple with 40-45 million sensors in 2010 for the new iPhone, reportedly set to launch in the second half of the year.

OmniVision Technologies is expected to see CMOS image sensor (CIS) orders for Apple's iPhone devices grow to 40-45 million units in 2010 from 20-21 million estimated this year, according to industry sources. The sources said OmniVision has secured 5-megapixel CIS orders for the next-generation iPhone model, which will hit shelves sometime during the second half of 2010.

DigiTimes noted in April that OmniVision had won a contract to supply Apple with 3.2-megapixel camera sensors for what turned out to be the iPhone 3GS. That report also claimed, however, that Apple had secured 5-megapixel camera sensors at the time for an unreleased product. No signs of those 5-megapixel sensors have surfaced, although speculation obviously centered around Apple's much-rumored tablet at the time.

Just days before Apple's September media event where it introduced new iPods, DigiTimes also claimed that OmniVision would be supplying 3.2-megapixel cameras for the iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod classic. All three claims turned out to be incorrect, however, as Apple apparently scrapped plans for including a camera in the iPod touch after the thinness of the device caused difficulties with its inclusion, the iPod nano received only a 0.3-megapixel camera, and the iPod classic failed to receive a camera at all.

Financial Times echos much of what was reported on the Wall Street Journal about Apple hoping to launch a subscription television service in 2010. CBS and Disney are currently believed to be closest to agreeing to a distribution deal with Apple. The content is expected to be part of the "entertainment and news" services that Apple may offer on their tablet computer.

FT also makes some unsourced claims that the Apple Tablet may be launching imminently. According to the publication "Apple is preparing an announcement next month that many anticipate will be the official unveiling of its tablet." The magazine may be referencing an iLounge report from September who claimed the Apple Tablet would be announced "on or before January 19, 2010" for release in May or June. Wall Street analysts believe mass production of the tablet could begin as early as February.

Since they are not planning on participating in Macworld or CES, an Apple announcement would likely come in the form of a standalone media event -- if these plans are indeed true. According to the original iLounge article, Apple was planning on leveraging the hype between announcement and launch much like the original iPhone release.

Media research firm Nielsen today released its lists of top U.S. mobile phones, sites, and brands for the first ten months of 2009, and the iPhone 3G took the top spot among mobile phones with 4.0% of the market. The iPhone placed slightly ahead of Research in Motion's BlackBerry 8300 series at 3.7%, and well ahead of the remainder of the pack, which was led by Motorola's RAZR V3 series at 2.3%.


Apple also made an appearance on Nielsen's list of top ten brands accessed via mobile networks for the January-September 2009 timeframe, taking tenth place on a list topped by Yahoo! and Google.

Anandtech spent some time with Epic Games' Mark Rein last week and was shown a demo of the Unreal Engine 3 running on a 3rd Generation iPod Touch. The demo included a flythrough as well as a playable level from Unreal Tournament.

It's using a modified Unreal Tournament level previously shown off at GDC. A virtual thumbstick on the left side of the screen controls your movement, while tracking your thumb in the lower right corner of the screen controls the camera. Just tap the screen to shoot. Mark said this is a tech test bed and theyÂ’re experimenting with several different control schemes including ones with tilt.

The Unreal Engine 3 is a modern 3D gaming engine which powers games such as Bioshock, Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3.


The game engine requires OpenGL 2.0 so this will restrict the game to 3rd generation iPod Touches and iPhone 3GSs only. Epic is planning on making the engine available to licensees at some point, opening the door eventually to Unreal-powered iPhone games.

Last week we saw the first evidence that iPhone 4.0 was in testing with reports that it was already being spotted in web site logs. We pointed out at the time that while interesting, such user agent logs could easily be faked. This week, we've received slightly more evidence that iPhone OS 4.0 is indeed undergoing testing.

One iPhone developer has since noted a single instance of iPhone OS 4.0 being used in their Pinch Media analytics.


The new operating system first appeared this week in their application's logs. While such data can still be faked, it seems less likely to be. Testing of iPhone OS 4.0 may correspond with reports of new iPhone hardware also being tested. Any new iPhone would require a new version of the iPhone operating system to support the new hardware. Apple is widely expected to release a new iPhone in the summer around WWDC 2010.