Apple Inc. (AAPL) Phablet: Rumor, or Does It Have Legs?

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is always “officially” mum about new products or launch dates for upgraded products, but it thrives on speculation, rumor and innuendo. Not to mention conjecture. And while there has been some bandying about a couple of new products that are “supposed” to launch this year, there might be one rumor story about such a product at a time.

So what does it mean when the same rumor gets featured in two different stories on two different Web sites on the same day? Is it just a slow news day, or could this new rumor have some legs and legitimacy to it? It might be weeks or months before we know for sure, but it definitely gets some attention.

This rumor, reported on two different U.S. tech sites, references the same story from a China newspaper.  And both tech sites, by the way, seem very skeptical of this rumor – seemingly because the “details” seem so out of character for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). But here it goes: the China newspaper report stated that its sources revealed that Apple is working on a 4.8-inch device that would be categorized as a “phablet” – a hybrid of a phone and tablet, too big for a phone but smaller than most tablets on the market – and would be called the “iPhone Math”, launching this summer and be a direct competitor to the Galaxy Note made by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

One tech site is cynical of this because it doesn’t believe Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) would deliberately design a device that is too big to be navigable by a thumb, since the company has said repeatedly in the recent past that it wanted its devices to be used by a thumb – and making a device wider than an iPhone would be problematic in that case.

What does the other site say about this?