Here are your Apple rumors and AAPL stock news items for Thursday:
Kids Want Their Apple This Christmas: Nielsen released a survey on Thursday morning tracking what electronic gadgets kids between 6 and 12 years old want this holiday, and Apple took the three top spots. A whopping 44% of survey respondents said that they wanted Apple‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad this year. The iPod Touch followed, with 30% listing it as the top priority, while the iPhone trailed just behind at 27%. Following Apple’s products, 25% favored, in equal measure, a computer, a non-iPad tablet computer and a Nintendo (PINK:NTDOY) 3DS gaming device. What is most interesting about these statistics is the decline in interest in traditional computers. In 2010, 29% of respondents expressed interest in a computer, trailing only the iPad, which commanded 31% of interest. Nielsen’s survey certainly won’t quell fear among PC makers worried about the iPad’s encroachment on their territory.
Apple Slows iPad 2 Orders Ahead of iPad 3: A Thursday report at Digitimes said that Apple is cooling off of iPad 2 production going into 2012. The company had procured enough display panels to produce between 15 million and 16 million iPads over the course of the third quarter, but Apple sold just above 11 million iPads in that period. The remaining stockpile of display panels will be used in the production of the iPad 3 starting in early 2012. Samsung and Sharp are reportedly manufacturing the iPad 3 displays for Apple. The iPad 3 is rumored to have a significantly improved screen over the iPad 2, offering resolution similar to the Retina Display used in the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.
Retailers Looking to Liquidate BlackBerry PlayBook: Research In Motion‘s (NASDAQ:RIMM) iPad competitor, the BlackBerry PlayBook, hasn’t exactly torn up the sales charts since its release earlier this year. The company shipped just 200,000 tablets during the third quarter of 2011, bringing the total to 700,000 overall. Apple shipped 11 million iPads in the last quarter alone. Now retailers are preparing to pull a Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) TouchPad, selling the PlayBook at hundreds of dollars less than its sticker price to move existing stock. A report at Apple Insider, citing ads from retailers like Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS), said that there are plans to sell the lowest-tier PlayBook for just $199, the same price as Amazon’s new Kindle Fire and $300 below the regular price of the PlayBook.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
