Piper Jaffray's senior analyst weighs in on the chances of a January announcement

Rendering: Piper Jaffray

In a note to clients Wednesday, Gene Munster put his spin on recent rumors regarding the Apple (AAPL) tablet computer that nobody has seen but everybody is talking about.

• Acknowledging media reports — including one in the current Financial Times — of an Apple announcement in January, Munster puts the odds of a special event occurring at 75% and the odds of a tablet being announced at that time at 50%.
• If the tablet were announced in January, he would expect it to ship some time in Apple's second fiscal quarter. "Based on a conversation this week with a Taiwanese component supplier," he writes, "we expect Apple to ship a tablet device by the end March."
• Munster had previously estimated a monthly run rate of 162,000 units once the tablet ships (about 2 million annually). "Assuming the tablet comes out in [March]," he writes, "we believe Apple would sell around 1.4 [million] units at a $600 ASP in [calendar year 2010], an increase of about 2% to revenue."
• Other reasons Apple might hold a January event: to launch a new iPod touch with a video camera, or a new Apple TV that could support a subscription TV service (see Can Steve Jobs unplug cable TV?)

What does Munster expect the tablet to be like? Read on:

"We expect the tablet hardware to be similar to an iPod touch but larger (about 10"); we expect the key differentiator of the device to be its software. While there are several options ranging from a touch screen Mac OS X to an iPhone-like OS, we expect the tablet to be driven by a new version of Apple's iPhone OS that runs a new category of larger apps alongside all the current apps from the App Store. We believe Apple's tablet would compete well in the netbook category even though it would not be a netbook. Rather it would focus more on apps, entertainment content (from the iTunes Store), and web surfing."

Meanwhile, the Boy Genius passes along a rumor that there is "definitely" a 7-inch model being introduced in January. "Whether this is in addition to a 10″ model, [his sources] don’t know."

For various artists' renditions of the mythical tablet, see Silicon Alley Insider's gallery here.

See also:

• Apple tablet set for spring launch?

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

A Taiwanese supplier reports that Apple has doubled its order for iPhone image sensors

Camera app icon. Image: Apple Inc.

OmniVision Technologies (OVTI), which makes the 3.2 megapixel image sensors in Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 3GS, is expecting orders for its iPhone chips to grow to 40-45 million in calendar 2010, up from 20-21 million in 2009.

This according to a report Wednesday in DigiTimes, a Taipei-based daily newspaper that covers — with uneven results — every hiccup in the Taiwanese and greater Chinese electronics industry.

The report describes a next-generation iPhone with a 5 megapixel camera scheduled to appear in Apple Stores in the second half of the year.

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Apple's pocket computer is America's most popular mobile phone, smart or otherwise

Research in Motion (RIMM) may have a larger market share and LG may have more phones to sell, but Apple (AAPL) has the U.S.'s No. 1 mobile phone, according to a report published Tuesday by the Nielsen Co.

Apple benefited from the fact that Nielson counted both its current models as one entry. Together the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS accounted for 4% of the U.S. market from January through October.

The four LG feature phones on Neilsen's  top 10 list had 6.4% of the market. Three BlackBerries shared 6.3%

Below the fold: Nielsen's top 10.

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CBS and Disney may join Apple's $30 per month TV service, says the Wall St. Journal

Photo: Apple Inc.

This could be totally disruptive. Or it could be another "hobby" like Apple TV that never quite takes off.

In a front-page story published Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that CBS (CBS) and Disney (DIS) are "considering participating" in Apple's (AAPL) plan to offer television subscriptions over the Internet.

It was the first hint of interest from TV content providers since the news broke last month — in All Things Digital, another News Corp. (NWS) property — that Apple was preparing to offer such a service to its 100 million-plus iTunes subscribers.

As initially described, customers would pay Apple $30 a month for streaming access to the best of TV.  Cable companies charge Americans an average of more than $70 a month for huge bundles of programs, most of which their subscribers never watch and didn't ask for.

Apple's service would be more like a streaming music service that offers all the content you want for a flat monthly fee. Without a critical mass of popular TV shows, it will never get off the ground. But if Steve Jobs can broker enough deals in Hollywood, the company may be, as MG Siegler puts it in TechCrunch Monday night, "on the verge of kneecapping the cable industry."

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I had a small, Twitter-hosted dustup recently with Trevor Loy, a pleasant fellow who, when he is not Twittering, brings truth and justice to the world via the agency of venture capital. Loy was hot and bothered over some turn of events in Congress having to do with immigration policy. Many entrepreneurs are immigrants, you see. And because venture capital equals entrepreneurialism, the proposed congressional action might harm VCs, which, in turn, would grievously harm the U.S. economy. This, Loy, explained, is because fully 21% of the U.S. economy is attributed to revenue earned by "venture-backed" companies.

Where, I wondered, did this startlingly encouraging statistic come from? Loy was kind enough to supply me the link to a report paid for by the National Venture Capital Association. Thank goodness for the hard work the NVCA does to help us understand the good VCs spread throughout the land. NVCA President Mark Heesen, a savvy Washington hand I've been privileged to chat with over the years, prefaced the report with a few nice words about the industry that employs him. "The data," he wrote, "continues to confirm that venture capital matters deeply, not only to our economy but to everyday lives of Americans, who use venture-backed innovations, work at venture-backed companies and dare to bring new ideas to the market."

Do you feel as warm and tingly as I do after reading that?

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Howard (right) and Prince (below) say online peace can only come when corporations achieve "cyberbalance." Photos: Perimeter

On  the Internet, the good guys and the bad guys are inextricably connected. But what happens when one side gets the upper hand?

By Doug Howard, chief strategy officer, and Kevin Prince, chief technology officer, Perimeter E-Security

(The following is an edited excerpt of the forthcoming book, Security 2020, scheduled to be published next year.)

Since the inception of computers and more specifically, our global reliance upon them, the number, severity, complexity, and source of security threats have all increased exponentially many times over.

Why do threats emerge? Sometimes a developer wants notoriety (that was the primary motivation in the late 90’s and the first few years of the new millennium) but today the main force behind digital threats is the hope of monetary gain.  Political and religious motivations are coming on strong, too.

At the same time, threat mitigation solutions and tactics constantly are developing to deal with these threats.  These solutions evolve over time and balance out each each new threat. The problem comes when threats emerge faster than solutions, and companies lose their balance. More

Laughter and applause greet a dig at the iPhone on Saturday Night Live

SNL's Seth Meyers. Image: NBC

You know you've got a public relations problem when you're a punchline on SNL's Weekend Update.

The host, Seth Meyers, doesn't make a lot of Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T) jokes, but this one worked.

"It was reported this week that Google would soon launch its own cellphone as a challenge to the iPhone. Also a challenge to the iPhone? Making phone calls."

The audience — presumably the usual mix of tourists and enough reception-challenged New Yorkers to appreciate the humor — laughed and applauded.

Video clip below the fold.

UPDATE: The clip has been removed from YouTube by NBC Universal. But you can watch the whole episode below or on hulu.com. The joke begins at 37:20.

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To promote democracy, the United States is working to get Eastern Europe connected to the 'net. The results are more practical.

By Julia Ioffe, Contributor

When the village of Syn’kiv in Western Ukraine first got a computer with web access in 2003, the local priest encouraged people to come out for the grand opening of the library’s Internet center. It had been paid for by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and the web access, which was free, was a novelty for this hamlet of 1,100 people.

Since then, however, the residents of Syn’kiv, a town known for its early tomatoes, have used the web to find out more precise local weather forecasts as well as the breeds of tomato best suited for the area and how to grow and fertilize them. In the last six years, this knowledge has helped Syn’kiv double its tomato crop.

Syn’kiv was part of a larger U.S. Embassy push to hook Ukraine, which has one of the lowest Internet penetration rates in Europe, to the web. More

Jason Schwarz's "Seven Reasons the Shorts Love Apple" is an investor's must-read

Source: TheStreet

"If you can keep a good stock down," writes Jason Schwarz, "then you are able to load up for the ride back up. It's like a slingshot — the harder you pull, the more propulsion you generate."

Schwarz, an investment analyst with a knack for self promotion — through a newsletter, an e-book, and a new hardcover — has written an easy-to-follow primer on why Apple (AAPL) has become the hedge funds' favorite punching bag. It was published as a gallery last week in TheStreet by Jim Cramer, a guy who knows a thing or two about manipulating Apple's stock price. (See here.)

For investors who wonder why Apple goes down just when common sense suggests it should go up, it's a must-read.

Below fold, the highlights:

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Lily Sussman is back from Egypt with the laptop that got "blown up" at the Israeli border

Photo: Lily Sussman

Three weeks ago, an American student working in Cairo was questioned for two hours at the Israeli border before security officials confiscated her Apple (AAPL) MacBook, called in a sapper, and shot it full of holes.

Lily Sussman, 21, told the story on her blog, where it drew more than a thousand comments and a fair amount of coverage in the Mideast press.

Before she flew home for the holidays, she gave The Daily News Egypt the video interview posted below the fold.

UPDATE: By luck or careful aim, Sussman's hard drive emerged unscathed. "I've managed to recover all the data!" she writes. "Yayy…It's a survivor. I have yet to hear back from the man handling my case about when and what I will be compensated."

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

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