There’s a large number of rumors surfacing about the Apple tablet.  Some people are saying that there will be a tablet and some people are saying that the rumors aren’t true at all.  Such is the secrecy of Apple culture.

An online survey that was slapped together by Border’s book store asks consumers to vote whether they “plan to buy an Apple iPAD (large screening reading device) this year.” Either Border’s knows something we don’t or they did not take the rumors of a tablet with a grain of salt.

Another possibility is that the slip could have been caused by a marketing company.  Usually major corporations outsource online surveys to marketing companies.

[via Engadget]

Redbox, the DVD rental service in the form of a vending machine is now testing is new service, video game rentals.  Redbox is adding video games to their vending machines and is preparing to launch a postal game rental service.

The game rental service will include games for the PS3, XBox 360, Wii, and PS2.  The rental cost are about $2 per game for a night.  To rent a game for 5 nights, the cost is about $9.  Currently there are about 13 XBox 360 games listed as their inventory.

[via Zatsnotfunny.com]

TomTom has finally made its way to the App store. The app is now available in Australia and New Zealand.

According to MacRumors, the application has four maps available for purchase. The US and Canada map is priced at $124.99, Western Europe is priced at $121.55 USD, Australia is priced at $70.90 USD, and NZ is priced at $81.03 USD.

The app is currently not visible in the US App store.

Unlike AT&T’s navigation app, TomTom will not charge you a monthly fee to use the application. The app’s maps are downloaded on the iPhone and stored locally.

Google’s mobile operating system is spreading like wildfire.  HTC has just announced that they have sold over one million units of the HTC Magic.  Not bad considering that the HTC Magic mobile phone was introduced this month in the U.S.

In the U.S., the HTC Magic is known as the myTouch 3G.  The HTC myTouch 3G / Magic mobile phone is a touch-screen handset that is similar to the G1.  The phone comes with a QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, GPS, and an HTML browser.

[via InformationWeek]

Amy Barzdukas, a general manager of Internet Explorer at Microsoft claims that Firefox’s one billion downloads claim is unlikely true.

“As with any marketing statement, I’d encourage people to be somewhat skeptical about large number claims. It’s an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area.”

However Mozilla did not claim that one billion people in the world are using Firefox, they are counting downloads based on repeated downloads, updates, and people with multiple computers.  This why the number does not seem too far-fetched to me.

[via Guardian/Gizmodo]

Mint.com is a popular online and mobile financial service that tracks spending habits and makes recommendations on ways to save money.  The company recently raised $14 million in Series C according to an SEC filing.

The $14 million round of funding was led by DAG Ventures.  Other investors include Founder’s Fund, Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, and First Round Capital.  Mint.com revenues are up 8 times year over year.

Currently Mint.com has about 1.4 million registered users and tracks $175 billion worth of transactions along with $47 billion in assets.  Mint.com has helped consumers potentially save about $300 million.

Mint.com will be able to capitalize on the data that is fed from their users’ bank accounts.  They can track the spending habits of all the consumers such as how much they spend on real estate and food.  Given this information, Mint would be able to generate reports and sell it to financial institutions or even grocery chain headquarters.

Based on these reports, financial institutions or grocery chains could tweak their APR and prices to maximize user consumption.

Sprint is planning to raise $500 million through a public offering which would go towards general business expenses.  This past Monday, Sprint filed the possibility of the fund raising with the SEC.  General business expenses also includes the acquisition of Virgin Mobile for $483 million.

Sprint would raise the funds by offering senior unsecured notes that would mature in August 2017.  The 8-year notes was given a BB rating by Fitch Ratings.  Sprint lost many subscribers last year, but all of their competitors gained subscribers.

However Sprint has the exclusive rights for selling the Palm Pre device and this helped the telecommunications company beat sales records.

Chinese telecommunications company China Unicom has just ordered about 5 million iPhones from Apple indicating that the device will be selling in China very soon.  China Unicom bought 5 million iPhones at the price of $1.46 billion.

The iPhones which will be powered on WCDMA networks without WiFi ccosted 2,000 yuan ($293) each.  “The price of the 8G standard iPhone is set at about 2,400 yuan and the 16G may be sold at 4,800 yuan,” stated China Unicom General Manager of Customer Development Yu Zaonan.

Rumor has it that the Apple and China Unicom deal will run for about 3 years.  The AT&T and Apple deal is going to expire in 2011.

[via AppleInsider]