"Could rival" articles are a great example of what's wrong with newspapers these days. A quick paragraph by paragraph breakdown of the content of this article should be enough to show anyone what's wrong with it:

P1: People are excited about Apple's rumored tablet computer.

P2: People were excited about Apple's rumored phone.

P3: The iPhone was successful. (Plus an irrelevant point about Apple's controlling nature.)

P4: Bloggers are excited about a possible tablet computer, but Apple has failed sometimes as well.

P5: Irrelevant discussion of other possible industrial design releases this year.

P6: Nothing.

P7: Nothing. (The entire content of this paragraph is an incorrect statement that tablet computers have been becoming more popular since the XO laptop. The article's author has confused netbooks with tablets. It's also confused the XO computer with the design concept the OLPC organization recently created that they will soon fail to implement.)

P8: Continued confusion of the tablet and netbook markets.

P9: The rumored tablet computer from Apple will be able to do stuff that you would expect a tablet computer to be able to do.

P10: The market for eReaders needs a messiah. (If I were being more snarky, I might say that the writer has never met an Amazon Kindle owner.)

P11: An extremely popular eReader would improve the demand for content normally used by eReaders.

P12: The rumored tablet will need a corresponding store.

P13: Nothing. (Plus an incorrect point about Apple's sustainability. Whether she means environmental or economic, there's no evidence to support either point of view.)