The story of the Apple tablet has been one of hearsay and gossip from the start, and this report, despite coming from a respectable newspaper, is no different. Translation courtesy of the MacRumors forums, and our polygot tipster:

Taiwan's high-tech supply chain companies said Apple will debut its first netbook in October; Apple will pose itself to tackle the Christmas shopping season. Three corporations – Foxconn, Wintek, Dynapack have received direct orders from Apple.

To anyone who's been following this story, this will sound familiar: Wintek was the company previously said to have supplied a bunch of touchscreen panels to Apple for use in a tablet—a narrative that lost a little steam after a no-show at WWDC. But bearing a resemblance to previous rumors could mean two things: either the China Times has been able to independently confirm something true, lending it credence; or they—or their sources—are simply echoing rumors. The pricing rumor is subject to the same suspicions:

Because Apple will adopt touch screen technology on its netbooks, Apple will not target low-end consumers, avoiding direct competition with Acer, Asus, as well as their less-than-500-dollars netbooks. Apple's netbook (or a "tablet" as many call it,) will probably be sold at around $800 USD each.

Even assuming this is true, it's strictly a hardware rumor, and doesn't answer one of the most important questions regarding the tablet: what the hell kind of OS will this thing run? Two takes. [Macrumors--Thanks, puffnstuff!]

This is significant for two reasons: first, capacitive touchscreens are much, much more finger-friendly than their resistive counterparts, and could help improve the good-but-not-great Nokia touchscreen experience; and second, capacitive touchscreens are generally only popular in cultures with a Latin alphabet, i.e. not Asia, where stylus-dependent handwriting recognition is vital for the success of a touch phone. In other words, this theoretical phone has a good chance of making its way to our shores.

Keep in mind, though, that this is a Digitimes report on a Wintek order, meaning it probably came from the same source that promised an Apple netbook/tablet by Q3. Hence, salt. [Digitimes]

And besides, we all know in our heart of hearts that an iPhone-style-minus-the-phone touchscreen video iPod isn't so much fanboy wet dream as it is an inevitability. So if this pans out, fantastic—it's sooner than we (or certain analysts) expected. But if not, it's only a matter of time. After all, some analyst said so. [Electronista]