Apple may have something to announce at the end of this month. But what that something is… is a mystery.
Tongues are wagging and the rumor mill is grinding away. AllThingsD, who is owned by Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, quoted unnamed sources ‘close to the situation’ as saying that Apple is putting together a media event, to be held in New York, at the end of January.
Current speculation is that this will not be an announcement related to new hardware. No new iPad 3 or Apple TV, unfortunately. Those types of large-scale, big-deal announcements from Apple are normally done near their home base in Cupertino, California.
AllThingsD predicts that this will be an announcement related to publishing or perhaps a new advertising campaign.
Here it CP, our staff is wondering if this may involve some kind of response to Amazon’s Kindle Fire or Kindle e-book sales, which have both seen incredibly strong volume over the holidays. While the Fire is not in the same league as the iPad, Apple has surely been affected by the (expected) 5 million Kindle Fire units that have been sold – not to mention the heaps of attention that Amazon has received. Prior to the release of the Fire, only Apple had ever received that much ongoing positive media attention for a device. As for what a response might be – who knows? But wouldn’t a price decrease be sweet! One analyst is saying that may just happen… on the iPad 2… after an iPad 3 is launched. So this New York thing wouldn’t be about that.
Over at MacWorld, Philip Michaels speculates that the announcement will be publishing related. He points out that “Apple has been very active on the publishing front in recent years, inking deals with book publishers to offer up ebooks via the company’s iBookstore.” It also says it could be related to Apple’s mobile iAd service, which launched in 2010 but has not garnered any steam as of yet.
We’ll keep our ears open and provide details here at CP as updates as come in.
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