VP for France Telecom verifies Apple tablet on the way?
French tech blog Nowhereelse.fr had a scoop of sorts this morning.
It turns out that Stéphane Richard, VP of France Telecom, was interviewed by Europe 1's Jean Pierre Elkabbach today. During the interview, Elkabbach made a comment to Richard: "According to the weekly Le Point, (in) a few days your partner Apple will launch a Tablet with a webcam."
To that, Richard simply replied, "Oui." ("Yes")
Elkabbach, probably sensing that French television viewers would love to know if they'd be in line for the new device, continued: "Is it that Orange users will also benefit?" This is in reference to the Orange wireless brand in France.
The long, complicated answer from Richard: "Bien Sûr!" ("Of course!")
Our French is not the best, so it's impossible to verify the rest of the discussion or the context in which these comments were taken, but according to the translation of the Nowhere Else page, the tablet is to at least be announced (if not sold) by the end of the month. In addition, the blog reports that the tablet will have a webcam and videophone capability built-in.
Update: TUAW reader Florian translated parts of the video and sent this to us: "They [the customers] will benefit more easily with the webcam. It will indeed be transmitted from the image real time, we will update this [use] in a way that videophone has been a few years ago and is also the network size and network quality that we put in place to serve the French will allow the new uses to develop." While that translation obviously leaves a bit to be desired, it seems to be the source of the information about videophone capabilities.
The original video (in French) follows on Page 2 if you wish to translate for us and provide additional commentary.
