NYT: Apple’s Tablet Hype Taking Biblical Proportions

(Credit: NY Public Library, wallyg/Flickr)

There are more than 13 million online mentions of “Apple tablet,” according to Google. With tankers of ink emptied writing about the fabled device and a supposed Jan. 26 announcement looming, a New York Times columnist takes aim at all the hoopla.

“There hasn’t been this much hype about a tablet since Moses came down from the mountain,” writes media reporter David Carr. Carr (who calls the rumored Apple device the “Jesus tablet”) was just one of more than two dozen mentions in the Times in December 2009, alone, according to Fortune.

Will the iSlate, or whatever the product is finally named, save the print industry, beaten around the head and shoulders by declining sales and ad revenue? Maybe. Carr suggest’s the tablet is an “opportunity to renew the romance between printed material and consumer.” We may have seen the first sparks when Amazon reported selling more ebooks than printed books over Christmas.

Another NYT writer, for the company’s International Herald Tribune, likens the tablet’s potential to another Apple runaway hit, the iPhone.

“If a really great e-reader appeared, the market would explode,” writes design columnist Alice Rawsthorn. “If it comes through, demand for electronic books, newspapers and magazines should soar.”

However, a number of rivals are expected to use CES, starting Jan. 7, to steal some of Apple’s thunder. Dell, Notion Ink, Freescale Semiconductor – even Microsoft, could use the annual gadget event to promote their own tablets, according to BusinessWeek.

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[Fortune ,AppleInsider and NYT]

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