New rumours of a 7-inch iPad are hitting the net. Ezra Gottheil giving his keynote speech at the Computerworld mentioned 2 new products after iPad 3 is launched sometime in March.

7 inch iPad and a wireless keyboard case for iPad are to be the next Apple inventions this year. 7 inch iPad was opposed by Steve Jobs, but is well received form factor with other manufacturers so there may be some merit to this. We’ll keep you posted on this.

iPad 3 is expected to be announced in the first week of March and released a week later. It is to have higher 1536 x 2048 resolution (retina like, but not retina), a new quad-core A6 CPU, and LTE connectivity.

It didn’t used to be just Apple’s hardware and apps that thrashed the competition, Apple’s phone-based customer service was also streets ahead of the rest. However new figures show customer satisfaction has deteriorated, with complaints about wait times and automated responses.

The findings were revealed in a study by Vocalabs, and claim that the last 18 months has seen a steady deterioration in Apple’s tech support services, to the point where they are sinking to lackluster levels found amongst competing companies.

Vocalabs conducted research over the last three-and-a-half years in regard to tech support calls to Dell, HP, and Apple, and Apple was a clear leader in the beginning. Yet towards the end of 2011 satisfaction with Apple’s tech support services fell away sharply, a 20% decline on the number of ‘very satisfied’ customers from a peak of 73% in mid 2010 (compared with a 5% fall for Dell and a 2% decrease in the number of very satisfied callers for HP). Overall the figures bring Apple’s tech support down to within 4% of Dell’s tech-support customer satisfaction levels.

According to Peter Leppik, CEO of Vocalabs:

“Despite its significant decline, Apple continues to lead our survey in overall tech support quality,”

Last year, just prior to launching the iPad in China, Apple attempted to trademark the name ‘iPad’ in the People’s Republic. However, the request was refused, since Shenzhen-based Proview Technology already owned the trademark Apple sued, but last week the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court threw out Apple’s claim to the trademark. Proview Technology has been targeting Apple’s resellers in Shenzhen and Huizhou, calling for an immediate halt to sales of Apple’s beloved slate iPad 2. If successful, Proview Technology intends to extend the iPad ban across the whole of China.

It’ll be interesting to see how this legal battle develops – to any westerner it looks like piggy-backing on Apple’s good name, but the People’s Republic of China takes quite a relaxed view of such topics as intellectual property rights. However a country-wide ban would surely see Apple’s withdrawal from the country, and that surely would be unthinkable.

Shenzhen-based Proview Technology claims the right to use iPad as their own and that Apple violates intellectual property rights by using the same name for their tablet. Acording to Proview’s lawyer Xie Xianghui, Proview owns rights to sell iPad trademark in China since 2001. The claim was filed last year at the Pudong district court in Shanghai and later this month we should see a verdict. Should Proview win this law suite Apple will be ordered to pay Proview $38 million.

Proview Technology wants Apple to

“stop selling and marketing for Apple’s iPad in China. We also demand an apology.”

Further Xie explained that

Proview Taiwan, which is affiliated with the Shenzhen company but did not legally represent it, sold the trademark to UK-based IP Application Development. The UK company then resold the rights to Apple… transaction did not include the rights to the name in mainland China.

Last year Apple sued Proview Shenzhen for a right to sell iPad in China, but lost.

Via ChinaDaily