Thursday Apple Rumors: They Only Want iPad

Here are your daily Apple news items and rumors for Thursday: Theres Other
Tablets? Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ ) shareholders are understandably nervous
about the companys second-quarter earnings report due at the end of Thursday's
trading day. Retailers like Best Buy (NYSE: BBY ) are reporting that the
companys new TouchPad tablet computer has been a monumental failure since
releasing in early July. Any other company looking to put a tablet on the market
in the near future would do well to peruse a new study published by
Milwaukee-based analysis company Robert W. Baird. After surveying more than
1,000 consumers, the Baird survey found that 50% of respondents already owned a
tablet or planned on buying one soon, and 95% of them said the tablet theyre
interested in is Apple s (NASDAQ: AAPL ) iPad. By comparison, 10% said they were
interested in purchasing HPs TouchPad and just 4% expressed interest in Research
in Motion s (NASDAQ: RIMM ) PlayBook. 4G After All? Apple is expected to show
off two new iPhones at the end of September. One will be the new, high-end
iPhone 5, and the other will be a smaller, cheaper iPhone model. Both of these
new phones, however, still will use the same 3G technology in the iPhone 4 thats
supported by Verizon (NYSE: VZ ) and AT&T s (NYSE: T ) largest networks rather
than the growing 4G networks using Long-Term Evolution technology those telecoms
have been building. At least, thats what rumors have suggested. An anonymous
source told Engadget on Tuesday that AT&T recently installed 4G equipment in a
prominent Apple Store . The report showed a photograph of the equipment but
later was removed at the request of the source. More interesting is that the
equipment used the 700MHz and AWS bands information that might be useless to
the layman on its own, but enlightening when coupled with the fact these are the
bands AT&T intends to use for its LTE network, provided its merger with T-Mobile
USA is approved. iPhone Maps Improved With Augmented Reality: A Thursday report
at Apple Insider detailed a newly published Apple patent application titled
Augmented Reality Maps that would bring interesting new functions to the iPhones
Maps application. The new technology would use the same augmented reality
technology used in other applications data about physical objects in view of
the iPhones camera is displayed over them on screen. This new technology would
use the iPhones camera, GPS, compass and gyroscope in tandem to offer street
name information and directions in real time based on what a person is looking
at directly through their iPhone. Investors reading this are invited to marvel
at the fact we now live in an episode of The Jetsons . As of this writing,
Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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