Notably, this dominance of the field has continued even as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as a handful of other companies, have poured into this market to sell tablets. Still, none have been able to dislodge Apple’s tight grip on consumers’ demonstrated preference here. And CEO Tim Cook basically dismissed Amazon and its Kindle Fire (and others) as true competitors. Here’s what Cook said on Tuesday during the earnings call for one of the company’s best quarters ever:

I think people really want to do multiple things with their tablets, so we don’t see limited-function tablets and e-readers as being in the same category. They’ll sell a fair number of units but people who want an iPad won’t settle for limited function.

Last year was supposed to be the year of the tablet … but most people would agree it was the year of the iPad, for the second year in a row. And we’re going to continue to innovate like crazy.

Data from Pew Research found that during December that both e-readers and tablet ownership nearly doubled, so clearly some people want e-readers. And sales estimates indicate Amazon, whose Kindle Fire is significantly cheaper than the iPad, may have sold around 5 million Kindle Fires between October and December 2011.

Not only is Apple’s tablet outselling all other competitors in its market, it’s taking down devices outside tablets too. On the call, Cook also noted that per NPD data, the iPad outsold desktop PCs last quarter. He also repeated, as he has for the past few quarters, that he does see the iPad taking away sales that would otherwise go to Macs as well. And he’s OK with that:

There is cannibalization of the Mac by the iPad but we continue to believe there is much more cannibalization of Windows PCs by the iPad. We love that trend, we think it’s great for us.

With growth among consumers, education (Apple sold 1.5 million iPads to schools last year, which was more than the number of Macs sold to schools), airlines, healthcare companies and a growing list of large enterprise companies in almost every field, Apple has very clearly covered its bases early, making it hard for competitors to beat it in any particular target market.

So can anyone loosen Apple’s grip on tablets? The company’s momentum here doesn’t look like it’s about to diminish any time soon. And let’s not forget it’s very likely that a new iPad model is just around the corner.

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Proview is a manufacturer of flatscreens which unsuccessfully launched a tablet called IPAD in 2000, registering the trademark in many countries around the world. In 2006, Proview Electronics, which shares a parent company with Proview Technology, sold Apple use of the IPAD name, but whether or not that deal included China is debated by the two companies.

Apple’s applied for ownership of two Chinese trademarks related to the iPad name (“iPAD” and “IPAD”), made prior to its introduction of the iPad for sale to Chinese consumers. But that application was rejected by the trademark office because they were listed as owned by Proview Technology, not Proview Electronics, which brokered the original sale.

Apple sued Proview Technology, seeking the court’s recognition that it is in fact the owner of the patents, but said suit was rejected by the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court on Tuesday. In a statement, the court said any claims Apple had secured on the trademark only applied to Proview’s Taiwan subsidiary, not the Shenzen-based Proview Technology.

Apple can still appeal the decision, but in the meantime, it faces suits from Proview Technology that seek to ban the sale of iPads in Shenzhen and Huizhou, two cities in southern China. Proview is seeking injunctions in those two cities first, with the intent of pursuing similar blocks country-wide should those rulings go in its favor. The hearing for the Shenzhen case begins on Dec. 30.

Obviously, having its case to gain ownership of the trademarks thrown out isn’t good news for Apple, but winning there was only the best-possible outcome for the iPhone-maker, and losing is by no means the end of the world. Proview is admittedly threatening its business in a key market, and seeking $1.5 billion in compensation from Chinese courts for copyright infringement. But we’ll likely never see either a banning of the iPad in any Chinese city, or a payday quite so large.

Proview is an admittedly struggling company, according to reports. It’s in this for a payout, but to fight Apple in the long haul isn’t a practical solution for the small-time component maker. Speaking to the Financial Times, Proview representative Li Su basically admitted as much, noting the company hopes the court’s rejection of Apple’s claim on the trademark makes its “negotiations with Apple a little easier.”

We’ll have to wait and see how this shakes out, but it’s probably going to take the form of a settlement for a sum somewhere far south of the $1.5 billion Proview is seeking in damages, since Apple likely wants this to go away as quickly as possible so it can continue its impressive success with the iPad in China without distraction.

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Moskowitz is mostly reiterating what he heard from Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer in a recent sit-down with them, during which they discussed the Kindle Fire’s role in relation to the iPad. Moskowitz came away with the clear impression that “Apple is not seeing much pressure from lower-priced tablets” and that current Kindle Fire buyers “could gravitate to more feature-rich experiences” down the road based on their initial use of the cheaper Amazon device.

J.P. Morgan and Apple execs apparently aren’t all that concerned over Amazon’s new Android tablet, which is already projected to beat the sales of all other tablets based on the Google mobile platform by the end of this quarter. And it’s true that the Kindle Fire could act as a sort of gateway drug, turning users on to the tablet experience but leaving them craving features missing from the Amazon device, like a full-fledged market of applications targeted to large-screen devices, a larger screen itself and cellular data access.

It’s an admittedly rosy outlook from a source with a vested interest in seeing this outcome come to pass, however. There is another obvious possibility to contend with too: Users could find that the Kindle Fire provides everything they really need in a tablet experience (web browsing, media playback) for an acceptable price and might not look further. Whether or not those users would have looked at iPads otherwise or whether another, significant portion of Fire owners might not find themselves wanting more is another question.

I think Apple’s optimistic outlook should pan out, however, as long as one thing remains true: tablets continue to encroach upon and replace PCs as primary computing devices for general users. In that case, the Kindle Fire and the iPad likely will enter into a mutually beneficial orbit, with the cheaper device’s drawing in first-time tablet users and the iPad’s acting as a sort of graduation gift for when they opt to use tablets as their main computers.

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An Apple store in China

A new Morgan Stanley survey (via AppleInsider) found that Apple is the most desirable brand of computer in China right now, beating out local heavyweight Lenovo. China became the biggest buyer of personal computers as of August, according to IDC, so that’s great news for Apple.

The Morgan Stanley survey of over 1,500 respondents spread across 16 Chinese cities found that Apple was picked as the brand of choice for people’s next computer purchase 21 percent of the time. That compares with just five percent who currently own an Apple computer. Lenovo still remains the top choice for consumers’ next purchase, but it dropped from 31 to 23 percent. If laptops are considered alone, Apple exceeds Lenovo as the next purchase of choice, with 22 percent of respondents choosing Cupertino’s products over Lenovo’s 21 percent.

Aside from being high on consumer t0-buy lists, Apple also ranked as the most desirable PC brand, according to the survey. It achieved a weighted score of 66 percent, with Asus in second at a close 65 percent.

The main barrier to Apple computers for most respondents was price; only 7 percent of survey respondents said that they would be willing to spend north of $1,000 for a computer, which is where the bulk of Apple’s line lies. Luckily, the trend is changing; of those planning to buy a new computer, half plan to do so within two years and expect to spend 6 percent more than the roughly $700 average price currently paid. If Apple can lower or keep prices the same as Chinese customers grow more affluent and continue to expect to pay more, eventually cost won’t be nearly the barrier it is today.

The iPad is also walking away with the tablet market in China, just as it is elsewhere. Sixty-eight percent of respondents plan to make it their next tablet purchase, while 65 percent of tablet owners currently have one. The iPhone is also poised to do very well, with 40 percent of respondents saying it will be their next device, more than four and a half times the number of current iPhone users as polled.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that China was now Apple’s second-largest market, and judging by these numbers, it won’t be too long before it climbs to the top spot.

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It’s understandable that analysts would predict a similar sort of trajectory for the iPad that the iPhone has experienced; after all, a tablet is just a larger smartphone, and both categories of devices run basically the same mobile operating systems, at least as far as iOS and Android are concerned.

The only proven tablet OS

But the experience on both Android and iOS tablets for end users isn’t nearly the same as the experience on phones using both platforms. If Android feels a bit immature on smartphone hardware, it feels exceedingly so on tablet devices. IOS, on the other hand, feels tailor-made for each. Nothing about it seems hasty, or an attempt to quickly gain a foothold in a market the OS was shoehorned into in the first place, the way Honeycomb did. Ice Cream Sandwich could improve the situation, but at most, it will probably be an evolutionary update, if the history of Android OS iteration is any example.

In other words, Android has yet to prove it can even deliver a mature, feature-complete tablet OS designed to take advantage of larger-screened devices. That Gold suggests in his note that QNX and Microsoft will be able to each acquire 10 percent of the tablet market by 2015 is an even greater reach, since those platforms have even more to prove in terms of market relevance. RIM can’t even get email working on its platform until 2012, and Microsoft’s software is a risky desktop/mobile hybrid that has yet to see a public release. Predicting either’s ascendancy at this point to a solid but distant third is like seeing Zune and anticipating it would eventually be a serious contender alongside the iPod.

Distribution model differences

Predicting the iPad vs Android tablets market to proceed along the same lines of the iPhone vs. Android phones market also discounts key differences in the distribution model of both devices. Tablets, despite some support from carriers for 3G data plans, stand in for computers more than phones for most consumers, and that’s the way many people shop for them, too.

Carriers, then, don’t have nearly as much say in which devices get pushed as they do with smartphones. In the past (and still today), if you wanted an iPhone, in many markets you were stuck with one or two carriers. If you wanted network choice, you had to go to a different device. Also, carriers have tended to favor Android because it offers them more customization options, allowing them greater controller over the customer relationship.

So long as the tablet isn’t inextricably tied to distribution through network operators, Apple will have an advantage, since it has the strongest marketing, sales and retail network of any device OEM.

Usage still far ahead

As we reported yesterday, Apple’s iOS market share by usage is still well ahead of Android or any other competitor, as measured by website access by platform and by browser. Those numbers combine both tablet and smartphone figures, but since Android is acknowledged to be faring much better versus iOS in smartphones than in tablets, it stands to reason that the iPad is skewing things heavily in Apple’s favor.

We sometimes see reports that claim Apple is losing ground, but more often than not, those numbers reflect shipments, not actual sales to consumers, as Kevin Tofel pointed out. Many of the Android devices reported as shipped are likely sitting on store shelves, whereas Apple’s numbers represent devices actively being used by consumers.

Determining the actual gap here is made even more difficult when you consider that new Android tablets are constantly coming to market. Combine old stock with new, throw in a glut of essentially obsolete devices in the form of the discontinued HP TouchPad, which could be had for just $99 during the last couple of months, and you get even more of a statistical minefield that probably doesn’t represent long-term trends in any accurate way.

Apple is best positioned to innovate

The iPad has a huge lead in its current form, and Apple has lots of money to spend on R&D, which makes it the best-positioned tablet-maker to introduce category-innovating new form factors, features and technologies. The competition can try to shake things up, too, and have done so with different sizes, detachable laptop docks, etc., but if the groundwork isn’t laid, these variations on Apple’s successful model have little chance of succeeding.

Predictions that draw parallels between the smartphone realm and the tablet market are missing the point; the real future makeup of the tablet landscape will be drawn by unconventional attacks like Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire, which counts not on mimicking Apple’s success, but on consumer willingness to sacrifice on features in order to get a low-cost, content consumption device.

Even so, I think the iPad will weather these and other assaults and continue to reign beyond the 2015 mark, for the reasons outlined above and my past arguments about why Apple’s tablet is still more appealing than the Amazon offering.

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The Levitatr is an iPad Bluetooth keyboard with a magic trick up its sleeve: The actual keys emerge from a smooth surface at the press of a button, magically appearing when you’re ready to type. Activating the keys also activates backlighting, which will be a bright LED white in the final shipping version. Check out a prototype in action:

In black and aluminum, the Levitatr looks good either at rest or when its keys are out and ready to play, but that’s not the only advantage of its unique function. Levitatr designer James Stumpf explains that hiding keys away makes them less prone to getting gummed up with dirt and grime, and it prevents accidental keystrokes should it be jostled around in your bag, extending battery life.

Speaking of batteries, that might be the only real downside to the Levitatr: It requires four AAA batteries to run for an undisclosed amount of time. The absence of an internal battery may be annoying, but at least it will save you some charging time when you run low on power.

An integrated kickstand will support your iPad (or other Bluetooth-enabled mobile device), and five dedicated function keys are mapped to iPad-specific commands, like the Home button.

As a slim, low-profile Bluetooth keyboard with a very unique feature, the Levitatr stands a good chance of competing with the likes of Logitech’s impressive keyboard case and Apple’s own offering, but it still has to meet its rather lofty funding target of $60,000. Offering Levitatr preorders for backers starting at the $79 level, which undercuts the Logitech offering by $20, just might help it reach that goal.

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Friday’s decision, which is the final result of that last hearing, means Samsung is out of options for fast-tracking a reversal with the Düsseldorf Regional Court. Samsung could still appeal to the Higher Regional Court, which might potentially result in a fast-track proceeding that lifts the injunction in as little as a couple of months. But if it doesn’t do that, or if its appeal is rejected by that court, the injunction will apply until the full lawsuit proceeds in front of the Regional Court. That means Samsung could be looking at about a year of not being able to sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and possibly more if decisions from the main proceeding agree with the preliminary injunction, making it permanent.

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents also says that the way the Düsseldorf court judge worded the court’s decision might suggest the injunction could be extended to cover “any new products in Germany that infringe the successfully-enforced [sic] Community design for as long as the injunction is in force.” A Community design is an intellectual property protection for the outward appearance of a product or part of it. That means recently unveiled devices like the Galaxy Tab 7.7, which was recently removed from the IFA show floor in Berlin because of patent issues, could be affected, too, while the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab can continue to be sold.

While the injunction still only applies to Samsung in Germany, Mueller says the Community design, which is the basis of the patent suit, has far-reaching implications if upheld. If it remains in force, Apple will be able to fairly easily get similar injunctions against similar products; in theory, few tablets would be safe. Closing off the entire German market from tablet competitors would likely affect the decision of electronics companies to even make one at all, especially if Apple can win similar victories in its ongoing cases in other international markets.

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TechCrunch’s early look on Friday of a pre-release model tells us the Amazon tablet will be a 7-inch color touchscreen tablet running a non-tablet version of Android on a single-core chip, with very little local storage. It will probably cost $250 and be Wi-Fi only to start, and it’s going to be called the Amazon Kindle. The name implies Amazon is not selling it as a tablet, but more as an e-reader that does much, much more. That makes it sound less like an iPad and more like the Barnes & Noble Nook Color. That’s the first of many ways that the two differ in their approach.

The cores of their businesses are also fundamentally different. Apple is a hardware company. The iTunes Store and App Store do well and they are important parts of  its business, but the purpose of the hardware isn’t just a pretty and pricey vehicle to sell music, videos, games, apps and software. The videos and apps are there to enable people to enjoy their iPod, iPhone or iPad. Amazon is an e-commerce company. They sell books, makeup, jewelry, electronics, etc. And, of course, lots and lots of e-books. That’s why Amazon sells the Kindle: principally as a way to sell more e-books.

Amazon also sells $79-per-year subscriptions in Amazon Prime that lets you get all the stuff you buy from them really fast for one low shipping price paid up front. Amazon’s forthcoming tablet is said to be integrated with Amazon services (think Amazon’s MP3 store, Cloud Drive and video-on-demand) you’re signed up for and, very significantly, free access to Prime. As Morgan Stanley says in a research note Tuesday, the latter is the key factor in what will make this tablet successful for Amazon:

The Tablet will accelerate customer adoption of Amazon’s Prime offering through potentially pairing the service with Tablet purchases. We estimate Prime customers annually spend 4-5x the amount of non-Prime customers and that global Prime customers total ~12MM of which ~7-8MM reside in the US (144MM total active users). Between new accounts and current, non-Prime accounts upgrading to Prime, net sales per active account has plenty of room to grow.

The idea of Amazon giving away free Prime subscriptions isn’t just a gimmick to get people to buy hardware. It’s one of the reasons they’re selling the hardware in the first place, since people buy more things when it’s easier for them. And people who have Prime, according to Morgan Stanley, buy more things from Amazon than those who don’t have Prime.

So those who use Amazon Prime or have accumulated music, videos, and are users of other Amazon services are going to be very excited by a new Amazon Kindle. The new Kindle is attractive in that it’s an e-reader that also does other stuff, whereas the iPad is positioned more as a general device.

In terms of specs, Amazon is apparently not attempting to build a technically superior tablet to the iPad. (A good move, since we’ve seen how well faster, more robust tablets with “access to the full web” have done versus the iPad.) Again, Amazon’s business is selling stuff.

The two are different devices, and the Amazon tablet is clearly not designed as an “iPad killer.” And whether or not Amazon can catch up to Apple’s 24 million iPads sold in 15 months, isn’t the right rubric for whether it’s been successful for Amazon.

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Refurbished Apple devices come with a one-year warranty, plus a new battery and outer casing. The only real difference is that they usually ship in unmarked boxes instead of the usual packaging supplied with new hardware. Until Wednesday, Apple only offered original iPad models as refurb devices. Now you can get 32 GB and 64 GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad 2 models for all carriers, as well as 64 GB Wi-Fi only units for $50 less than the original sticker price of each.

Hey, it may not be a $99 HP TouchPad, but it’s a way better deal than the fast one HTC is trying to pull with the $699 on-contract pricing for its upcoming HTC Jetstream. With all Apple refurbished products, quantities are limited, and available stock changes with frequently, so if you see something you like, go ahead and grab it.

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If you’ve ever used a tablet before, you’ll know that the Inkling is a pretty amazing prospect. Wacom’s drawing tablets have always tried to mimic the experience of drawing on paper, but the majority of the time you’re applying a pen to a blank plastic surface and then looking up at a screen to see what you’re drawing; it’s not anywhere near the same as sketching on paper, and it comes with a significant adjustment period. Even using the expensive Cintiq line, which lets you draw directly on a display built-in to a drawing tablet, doesn’t really feel like drawing on paper.

With the Inkling, digital drawing feels like traditional drawing because it is. The Inkling is basically an A4-sized clipboard that works with any old piece of paper you have lying around, complete with a pressure-sensitive drawing stylus that’s actually a pen. You draw on your paper clipped to the Inkling using the pen, and a detachable sensor records your strokes so that you can later upload them to your computer via USB. Tapping the sensor also creates new layers, so that you have a more flexible file to work with after import. The Inkling is wire-free and rechargeable with an estimated 8-hour battery life, so you can use it wherever you want, and the pen takes standard Mini Ballpoint refill cartridges, so there’s nothing expensive or specialized to replace.

Using Wacom Sketch Manager software that ships with the Inkling, you import your images as vector-based drawings that you can then manipulate in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, as well as Autodesk Sketchbook Pro or Sketchbook Designer. You can also save files as plain old unlayered JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, SVG and PDF files if you’d rather not do much advanced editing to them after upload.

If the Inkling still doesn’t impress based on my description, check out the official video from Wacom below. It pretty much guarantees, along with the relatively inexpensive $199 price tag, that I’ll be ponying up for one of these when it arrives mid-September.

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The Northern District of California court granted Apple’s request for an expedited trial on Thursday, FOSS Patents reports, although it didn’t quite give the company everything it was looking for. Apple had asked that the trial, which will issue a decision based on Apple’s original complaints of infringement related to mobile patents it holds as well as counterclaims made by Samsung, take place in February 2012.

Samsung objected to any sort of expedited timeline, arguing that there are 43 distinct claims to be addressed at the trial and that such complexity required more time. The median time for a similar case to come to trial in the district is 23 months, which would make for a March 2013 start date.

While the court didn’t agree to the proposed February date, it did set one much earlier than what Samsung called for. The trial will take place on July 30, 2012, just 15 and a half months after Apple’s original filing. FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller believes this will work out in Apple’s favor, since the schedule is ambitious and Samsung is on the defensive and will therefore have less time to organize its case.

Samsung also won a smaller victory in that some of Apple’s legal team withdrew in the face of a motion from Samsung to disqualify them, because they had previously worked for the South Korean company on cases in the same general ballpark, which might give them an unfair advantage. Mueller thinks this victory is relatively minor, considering the wealth of talent available to Apple in terms of high-quality intellectual property lawyers.

Apple isn’t running away with the game when it comes to its legal struggle with Samsung, but it is chalking up small victories that could lead to larger ones down the road. When the trial proper gets under way next summer, I expect we’ll start to see some real sparks fly, since the stakes should be even higher by then.

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Some might consider it contentious to include tablets in mobile PC rankings, but there are a few reasons it makes sense. First, consider that the PC industry is experiencing negative growth, at least in some markets, and slowing growth in others: DisplaySearch found that notebooks were up only 2 percent year over year this past quarter and were down 2 percent compared to the first quarter of 2011. At the same time, the tablet market is up. Tablet PC shipments rose 70 percent in the second quarter of 2011 versus the first and 400 percent year over year. Even without the iPad, tablet shipments were up 25 percent year over year, with more than 5.6 million shipped during the latest quarter, according to DisplaySearch.

The numbers suggest that some, at least, are replacing traditional mobile PCs with tablets, and especially with iPads. And that’s backed up by various observations. I see more iPads at events and conferences than I ever have before; in many cases notebooks are carried but remain in the bag while the tablet stays out. Also, friends who don’t use a computer very often outside work have been very happy to replace their notebooks and desktops with a tablet full-time. Surveys seem to be showing that these examples aren’t isolated statistical oddities.

Of course, Apple stands to gain the most from the inclusion of tablets, since the iPad remains the clear category leader. But the iPad 2 is apparently really helping things along. Late in 2010, we noted that Apple had reached the No. 3 spot in the mobile PC market, with iPads included. According to DisplaySearch, it now has 21.1 percent of the mobile PC market by shipments, while HP is the next closest, with 15 percent. Dell, Acer and Lenovo make up the rest of the top 5, with 11.6, 10.9 and 7.5 percent, respectively.

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Apple Store Sanlitun in Beijing, China

Apple has been showing strong growth in greater China in recent quarterly reports, including a sixfold increase in year-over-year revenue in the company’s third quarter. In its most recent investor call, Apple reported its total sales revenue in the region as $3.8 billion. Now it looks like Apple is even beating a longtime regional heavyweight for the first time, as Lenovo saw just $2.8 billion in sales (via FT) during its most recent financial quarter.

Lenovo still grew 23.4 percent compared to its business a year ago, and it remains the third-biggest PC maker worldwide by shipment volume (and the largest in China for eleven years running). But Apple pushed past it, due in large part to strong iPhone and iPad sales, which are doing much better than Lenovo’s Android-based LePad tablet and smartphone lineup. Note that Lenovo actually originally sold off its smartphone business in 2008, only to buy it back in 2010, which gave the iPhone a considerable head start in securing a beachhead for Apple. Also, Apple’s iPhone presence in China could get even stronger when China Mobile starts selling the Apple device.

China is a key market for Apple going forward, as it continues to grow in terms of consumer buying power on the world stage. Chinese consumers seem to be gaining confidence, especially when it comes to luxury goods, and Apple is perceived as a luxury brand there perhaps more than anywhere else in the developed world. That means Apple is in a good position to continue to capture market share away from competitors as Chinese spending power increases.

It’s a small but significant milestone as Apple continues to grow its business in markets that hold a lot of future growth potential. It will be interesting to see how that is affected by the release of the iPhone 5 and other upcoming devices, including ones that remain speculative, like the low-cost or prepaid iPhone.

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PC shipments in the U.K. for the second quarter of this year were only 2.5 million units, a decline of 15 percent compared to the year before, and Western Europe saw an even more precipitous decline of 18.9 percent year over year, with a total of 12.7 million shipments. Mobile PCs were the hardest hit with a 20.4 decline overall, and mini-notebook shipments (which includes netbooks) dropped a whopping 53 percent in Western Europe. France and Germany also saw big downward trends in PC sales, with 17.8 and 13.3 percent declines overall, and 49 and 43 perent drops in mini-notebook sales.

Click to see data from other European markets at Gartner.

Samsung saw the best growth in the U.K. market by increasing shipments 5.2 percent. Apple was the only other top vendor to see positive growth there, with a one-percent increase in shipments in the U.K., and a 6.4 percent gain in France.

Gartner notes that this data does not include mobile devices like tablets or smartphones, and that’s likely a considerable factor in the overall declines. It’s a pattern we’ve seen developing over the last few months all over the world, with the PC and tablet sectors’ growth trajectories moving in opposite directions.  It’s particularly telling that mini-notebook sales are suffering the biggest losses, since Apple’s iPad and other tablets are seen to be filling that gap for a lot of consumers, and in some cases replacing traditional PCs. The iPad is leading the way in this shift: While Apple still lags behind competitors in overal unit sales in the PC space, once you include the iPad it takes the lead.

Meike Escherich, an analyst with Gartner, doesn’t think this is a trend that we’ll see reversed anytime soon, either. “This quarter’s results highlights the ongoing weakness of consumer demand, and could indicate a structural change in the market that threatens to continue in the near future,” she said.

That should be a wake up call for PC manufacturers trying to get in on the growing tablet market: If they can’t ship mature devices with strong software at prices that consumers find attractive, Apple will soon occupy an even more dominant market position in consumer computing.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Ltd. (TSMC)   is the company that will be supplying the A6 to Apple, according to the report. Reuters reported last month that the chipmaker was getting underway with trial production, but this latest report seems to suggest that trial production hadn’t yet begun in earnest until now.

The current A5 chip that powers the iPad 2, and is rumored to power the upcoming iPhone 5, is supplied by Samsung, but reports have long suggested that Apple was considering moving their chip production to TSMC, which is the world’s largest semiconductor foundry as measured by market share. Apple is also thought to be looking to move some of its business away from Samsung, since the two companies are involved in a complicated and volatile legal battle in various courts worldwide.

The A6, based on the ARM chip architecture, will use TSMC’s new 28-nanometer process, along with 3D stacking technologies. That will make for an extremely low-powered chip that’s also capable of blowing away the A4 and A5 in terms of processing ability, since those designs both use layered instead of 3D designs. The 3D stacking tech will allow layers to be integrated vertically and horizontally into one single circuit. Computerworld’s Jonny Evans suggested in July that such a design could make for a processor powerful enough, in theory, to replace Intel chips in future MacBook Airs, so they should extend the iPad’s capabilities considerably.

Taiwan Economic News says TSMC and Apple had discussed working together on past chips, but the chipmaker didn’t have the spare production capacity to take on the iPad maker as a customer. Owing to a downturn in the industry this year, the publication says TSMC now has room to fill Apple’s orders.

While it may be disappointing to some that it’s looking less likely we’ll see an iPad 3 this year, an iPad 2 and an iPad 3 released so close together isn’t a smart play for Apple anyway, as I noted earlier this year. The iPad continues to dominate the tablet space, and Apple is currently doing a good job of keeping its competition from even being able to sell their products. Even if we won’t get to see a new iPad product before 2012, the news that TSMC is getting underway with its chipmaking plans ahead of ramping up for full production in the first quarter of 2011 is still an exciting prospect for fans eager to see what’s coming next from Apple.

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Amazon introduced Kindle Cloud Reader on Wednesday, an HTML5-based web application that runs in mobile Safari on the iPad, Safari on the Mac and PC, and Chrome on the Mac and other desktop operating systems. Amazon has promised support for additional browsers and platforms soon, but the fact that the iPad is in the launch group of devices makes clear Amazon’s main goal with this endeavor, which is to provide its customers with a full Kindle experience on the Apple tablet, including access to the integrated Kindle Store.

So how does it work? Once you navigate to http://read.amazon.com in your iPad’s Safari browser, you’ll be greeted with an invitation to sign in with your Amazon/Kindle account. Signing in will bring you to a screen featuring your library of Kindle book purchases, as well as a prompt directing you to allow Safari to increase the size of the database permitted for the site. This is used for the offline cache Cloud Reader maintains for reading without an active internet connection. Kindle Cloud Reader lets you tap and hold books from your library to download them to local storage for offline reading, and also stores books you are currently reading offline automatically, so that your reading won’t be interrupted if you lose connection.

Actually reading books in Cloud Reader is a pleasure, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell that you aren’t using a native app, especially if you place a shortcut to the web app on your iPad’s home screen, which launched the reader in a chrome-less, full-screen browser. You can change the font size and color of your books in Cloud Reader, and also view highlights, notes and bookmarks you’ve made on other devices. You can’t make new notes or highlights using the web app, but you can add new bookmarks just by tapping the upper right-hand corner of any page, even offline. It also works in both landscape and portrait orientations, as does the integrated store.

Some of the frills of the native app are missing, like page turn animations, access to Kindle periodicals, and the ability to search through a book for keywords. You also can’t look up terms in the dictionary the way you can in the full-fledged native Kindle app. But if you use those extra features sparingly, and go through books quickly, then Cloud Reader’s built-in bookstore might make up for those omissions.

The Kindle Store included in Cloud Reader makes browsing for books on your iPad a pleasure. You get a scrollable selection of recommendations at the top of the interface, and a list of best sellers and category navigation below that. You can search the store at any point, and navigate back and forward as you browse. The individual book listings actually provide you with more info at-a-glance in a more sensibly organized way than on the Kindle Store in the desktop browser, and you can try a sample of any book in the Amazon e-book library, which loads up right in the standard Cloud Reader reading interface. Unfortunately, it doesn’t remember where you were when you switch to your library; jumping back to the store brings you to the front page.

In the end, Kindle Cloud reader works, and works well, but purely for e-reading purposes, it doesn’t really match up to its native app counterpart. That said, the ability to shop for books and read them immediately might outweigh the disadvantages for some. For me, Kindle Cloud Reader will remain on my home screen, but I won’t be using it primarily for reading; I’ll be using it to buy. The iPad-optimized Kindle Store is a pleasure to shop, and thanks to iOS multitasking, I can pretty easily switch back and forth between the native and web-based Kindle apps. Even if I don’t use Cloud Reader as a native app replacement, it does prove one thing: Keeping integrated e-book stores out of native apps benefits no one but Apple.

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