“This was a difficult but necessary decision to improve the company’s competitive position,” Dell (DELL) spokesman David Frink said. “It is not a commentary on workers in North Carolina or workers in the United States.”

Of course not. As Dell CFO Brian Gladden said during the company’s last earnings call, “Our cost reduction programs have never been more crucial than during this weaker demand environment.”

Still, it’s unfortunate to see the company forced to shift work once done in the states to lower-cost contract manufacturers abroad. This is, after all, Dell’s third big closure in recent memory. The company stopped desktop manufacturing in Lebanon, Tenn., earlier this year, and in 2008, it shuttered a desktop plant in Austin, Texas.

“Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) will be the manufacturing partner for an upcoming tablet PC device from Apple, according to market sources,” the publication claims. “The sources indicated they believe the tablet PC features will focus more on e-book functionality rather than music, and that based on Apple’s marketing strategy, long battery life, quick Internet connectivity and an easy-to-use user interface will be key features of the device.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-book?
• Coming Soon From Apple: Big Touch?
• iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed

Now this is just getting silly.

Pali Research says sales of the Palm Pre are slowing. RBC’s Mike Abramsky says they aren’t and claims 325,000 to 375,000 have been sold to date, ahead of his expectations.

Citing some decidedly unscientific poll data, Jesup and Lamont analyst Kevin Dede suggests the device is plagued by build-quality issues and a high exchange/return rate, potentially 40 percent. Abramsky says it’s between two and three percent and calls BS on the build-quality issue.

“Most buyers appear delighted with their new Pre user experience,” Abramsky said in a research note Friday. “Pre satisfaction appears higher than legacy Palm devices (e.g., Treo), affirming improved execution from the ‘New’ Palm, including engineering, manufacturing, quality and process improvements.”

So, Pre sales are slowing. Or, they’re not.

And exchange/return rates are high.

Unless they’re not.

And these analysts are on point.

Unless, of course, they’re not. Too bad it’s impossible to tell without official numbers from Palm (PALM) or Sprint (S).

“According to reliable information, Apple will not follow the current market trend (by producing netbooks with screens about 10.2 or 10.1 inches in diagonal length.) Instead, Apple will produce screens with about 9.7 inches in diagonal length. Touch screen will be installed. Wintek will be the main manufacturer of the touch screen.”

Beyond screen size, there are no other specifications mentioned in the report. But it does include a price: $800. Which is $300 more than the $500-piece-of-junk price point Apple CEO Steve Jobs cited when he dismissed netbooks last October. “There are some customers which we chose not to serve,” Jobs said at the time. “We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.”

But will it allow Apple to ship an $800 one? Perhaps something with a P.A. Semi chip? Something that runs App Store apps and offers a sort of middle ground between the iPod touch and the MacBook?

UPDATE: Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster just weighed on these rumors in a research note. His thoughts, below:

On 7/13 Asian media reports suggested Apple is planning a tablet/netbook in Oct-09. Last week we spoke with a Taiwanese component supplier and continue to believe that Apple will launch a tablet, not a netbook, by early CY10. … We expect [it] to be a touchscreen device in the $500-$700 range (between the iPod Touch and MacBook).

[Image Credit: Adam Benton]

And the latest estimates, from Edward Snyder at Charter Equity Research, suggest that the impact is great. Sources in the manufacturing and retail channels tell Snyder that Palm may have sold as many as 300,000 Pres in June and 70,000 in May.

Those are impressive figures if they prove true. After all, Palm shipped just 351,000 phones in the entire quarter prior to the Pre’s debut. If Palm ships one million Pres to Sprint (S) in the device’s first full quarter of production, as Snyder believes, that will be an achievement indeed.

As I’ve said before, turnaround story of the year.

There’s a lot of emphasis at this unveiling on environmental concerns, reducing the footprint for manufacturing the new notebooks.

Says Ives: “We’ve refined every detail in service of the user.”

Steve Jobs announces that it’s time for Q&A, but with a caveat. No questions about the economy, he says, or Apple’s financial performance because there will be an earnings report next week. And no questions about “my health,” he adds, as a new slide appears on the big screen above him showing his blood pressure.

As the audience laughs, Jobs welcomes Apple COO Tim Cook and Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, to the stage to take questions from the audience.

Apple (AAPL) does not have an exclusive on the new Nvidia chip, but it will be first to market. “And we’re buying a lot of chips.”

Why no Blu-ray? “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurts,” says Jobs. Apple is waiting things out before “passing that cost burden on to consumers.”

Jobs expects the redesigns to trigger a refresh cycle in both the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

Someone asks why there are no matte screens. Answer: “The vast majority of our customers prefer a glossy finish.”

The 17-inch MacBook Pro is still available, but it has not been refreshed like the other models.

Final question: “Do touchscreens make sense on laptops?” Jobs’s reply: “We’ve experimented with them, but they don’t make a lot of sense to us.”

So no tablet.

And with that, the event is over.

Ives describes how excess aluminum left over from the original piece used in manufacturing is recycled throughout the process. The precision aluminum unibody enclosure that Apple used in the MacBook Air, he notes, is now being extended to the rest of the Mac notebook lineup.

Jobs returns to the stage. He explains that chipmaker Nvidia approached Apple (AAPL) about a new graphics chip that could be used in desktops. Apple decided to adopt it for laptops, however. The chip, called GForce 9400M, delivers graphics up to five times faster than Apple’s current graphics chips.

New notebooks will boast a multi-touch glass trackpad. The entire trackpad is the button.

The trackpad supports multifinger gestures, including some new ones. Four-finger gestures can control AMD app-switching.

A full-glass instant-on LED displays all connectors on one side. The notebooks feature next-gen graphics, mini-display port connector and a magnetic latch.

And they’re environmentally responsible. The unibody design, for example, requires only half the number of parts of Apple’s previous notebooks.

Jobs passes a chassis around the audience, and it is, indeed, very slick. “A tour de force of engineering,” says Jobs. Holding one of these in your hands, it’s tough to disagree.

More coming …

Marked by panic selling and wet-your-pants fear, it was one of the worst weeks in the financial world’s history–a week that cut the legs out from under Google (GOOG), beat Yahoo until its market cap bled purple and caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing more than one thousand points on an intra-day basis.

It was a week that saw Sequoia Capital warn its portfolio companies to prepare for a protracted downturn or, in the words of partner Michael Moritz, be “spattered on windshields and radiator grills and be forgotten.” Turns out Bubble 2.0 sounds a lot like Bubble 1.0 when it pops.

Beneath the screams of agony echoing across Wall Street, there was other news worth noting:

• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced plans to spin off its manufacturing operations.
• “Legal” turned out to be a poor choice of adjectives for RealNetworks’ RealDVD (RNWK), the company’s new “legal” DVD ripper. A judge extended the temporary restraining order barring the company from distributing it.
• This just in: Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL and Yahoo (YHOO) are still talking about a merger and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
  Where is Microsoft (MSFT) in all this? Sitting on the sidelines hoping the deal will go through.
• Finally, activist investor Eric Jackson, the creator of the Yahoo! Plan B investor community, revealed Yahoo! Plan C: his hedge fund’s divestiture of its Yahoo stake.

A bold move for AMD (AMD), which has sustained seven straight quarters of losses, and one that could dramatically alter its fortunes. Indeed, right off the bat, AMD will push $1.2 billion in debt off its books and onto those of the The Foundry Co. “This is the biggest announcement in our history” said CEO chief executive, Dirk Meyer. “This will make us a financially stronger company, both in the near term and in the long term, as a result of being out from the capital expense burden we have had to bear.”