Rest assured that Apple and Verizon won't hook up for a while. "I don't think it's real," says Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. "Apple has said publicly that they don't care for CDMA because it's not a worldwide standard. Thus, the first time Apple could show up on Verizon is when they move to LTE (long-term evolution), which is about 2012."
An Apple-Verizon deal for the tablet also carries the risk of alienating iPhone customers who've already switched over to AT&T for the iPhone, Safran says. On the upside, an Apple-Verizon deal would help Apple reduce the role of carriers, says Forrester analyst Charles Golvin.
Burning Question No. 3: Kindle who: Is this the killer e-reader?
Is there any doubt that the Apple tablet will go after the suddenly hot e-reader space, even though Steve Jobs has pooh-poohed the market? From Amazon's new large screen Kindle aimed at academia to New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. shaking the e-reader pom-poms to a slew of e-readers coming to market, signs everywhere point to a market on the verge of taking off. And an Apple tablet could light the fuse.
The problem, though, comes down to cost. It's unlikely that an Apple tablet will be cheap enough to get into the hands of the masses. Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney envisions the tablet as a clamshell version of the iPhone that will have a hard time breaking the $500 barrier. Indeed, there was a collective moan when Amazon announced the Kindle DX's price tag: $489.
The safe bet is that people won't pay that much for an e-reader. "There has been a lot of attention around the e-reader category recently, and this could be another interesting use case" for the Apple tablet, Safran says. "I don't see it being priced nearly low enough for this, though."
Got a different take? Send me an email at Tom Kaneshige. Or follow me on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.
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