Oppenheimer’s analyst Yair Reiner, today revealed in his note to investors that Apple is preparing to launch the new Tablet and the company has been reaching out to book publishers with a very attractive proposal for offering content on forthcoming tablet platform. He believes that Apple is offering same 70/30 split to book publishers that it offers to developers on App Store compared to 50/50 split given by Amazon on Kindle platform.

“Our checks into Apple’s supply chain indicate the manufacturing cogs for the tablet are creating into action and should begin to hit a mass market stride in February,” Yair Reiner wrote in the research note. “At this stage Apple appears to be sizing its supply chain to support production of as many as one million units per month. The tablet’s display will be a 10.1-inch multitouch LCD screen, not an OLED screen as others have suggested.”

Reiner also believes that the Apple tablet would make ebooks more relevant for education by simplifying functions such as scribbling marginalia. According to Yair, Apple could sell between 1 million to 1.5 million tablets per quarter at an average selling price of $1,000.

Our sources also say that Apple is preparing to release the tablet in first quarter of 2010, however, they say that Apple is targeting much lower price range of $500 to $700, and not $1,000.
[Via Market Watch]