There may be no Steve Jobs keynote at this February’s Macworld Expo, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t see the Apple CEO take the stage sometime this month. In fact, according to All Things D, the date to mark on your calendar is Wednesday, January 27.
Sources in a position to know tell me Apple (AAPL) is indeed planning a media event later this month at which the company will announce a major new product.
If we’re talking “major new product,” the one thing that’s obviously on everybody’s mind is the mythical tablet. Will Apple roll out the much-anticipated mystery device if and when Jobs takes the stage at the Yerba Buena Center?
If such an event is real, then a new product announcement seems almost logical in a way. Most of Apple’s existing product line has seen refreshes in recent months, such as the iPod, MacBook, and iMac lines. News on a next version of the iPhone is not likely to come before summer, though we may start to hear about iPhone 4.0 before that, if Apple runs true to form. There seems to be little in Apple’s catalog that is both in need of a refresh and merits a full song-and-dance event.
While January 27 falls after both this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and Google’s imminent press event, it’s close enough to inevitably invite comparison, chatter, and speculation. Not to mention that Apple’s results for the holiday quarter are due the week before the supposed event, which could provide a nice wave to ride into a product announcement.
Besides, what better way to start off the new year than with an entirely new product? And perhaps an entirely new vision of personal computing? Even if nobody knows for sure what it will look like or what it does.