This is Definitely, Maybe, Sort Of, Official Tablet News.
Hooray! More news on the Apple product that nobody really knows exists. The good folks at Flurry Analytics, while doing some of their analyzing, noticed about 50 mystery devices being identified as "iProd" being used on Apple's Cupertino campus, and ONLY being used on Apple's Cupertino campus. What's more is that these devices are also running an unreleased version of iPhone OS, this one coming in the delicious 3.2 variety. You may be hearing this and thinking to yourself, "well it's just another iPhone." Flurry knew you would be thinking this, and responds by saying "It (the mystery product) doesn't follow the same naming string as iPhone devices and is showing up as iProd... We're triangulating on other data as well that gives us confidence that we are looking at a tablet." Flurry would love to release this "other data", save for the privacy of their customers.
[caption id="attachment_25778" align="alignright" width="599" caption="Absolutely, almost, sort of a graph for what the Tablet is going to do. This is also what an iPod Touch does."]
What's more, after looking at this graph for a while, you will notice that the graph is measuring how many times apps belonging to a certain genre were downloaded and used. It is not measuring the use of the apps overall, but only if they are downloaded and opened. Comparing this list to Apple's top 50 app list right now (paid and free), the 3 most downloaded genres are games, entertainment, and news. So really, Flurry's chart is showing us the downloading tendencies of most iPod Touch users.
The rest of the report is purely speculation on the functions of a supposed tablet, who it is meant for, and the effects it will have on developers and the App Store. What Flurry has to tell is compelling sure, but more so because anybody will do anything for any bit of information on the mysterious Apple Tablet. But we've seen the "iProd" device pop up so much over the years, and in many cases it never amounted to anything. And the report was written on information collected after about 200 apps were downloaded, which isn't necessarily a huge range of data. With so much of the report being made up on speculation, it can't quite be taken as verifiable proof that a tablet even exists, much less is ready for launch. Though, it does add to the plethora of Tablet stories being thrown around. As Flurry acknowledged themselves, we'll all know Wednesday, but it's just so darn entertaining to try and guess until we get to that point...