New rumors of an Apple netbook surfaced on Monday, when several sources reported that we could expect to see a launch later this year. As it appears, Taiwan-based Wintek is supplying Apple with the touch panels for the new netbook (the articles quotes a Chinese newspaper).

Apparently the Taiwanese company has admitted to working with Apple on a new product, but it did not mention what that product is, or when exactly we are going to see it.

Furthermore, two people familiar to the situation told Dow Jones Newswires that the netbooks will have monitor screens that vary between 9.7 inches and 10 inches, but other details continue to remain unknown for the time being.

This was just the beginning, and the media of course went wild on speculating what this device could do, how it could look like, how much it would cost and so on. I guess it’s better to just let Apple reveal that for us, although it will probably take them a while to do that.

What we do need to keep in mind is a recent report by Gartner, according to which PC shipments should expect the worst decline in history, while mini-notebooks might see a win. The sales for 2009 have been estimated at 21 million units, almost twice the number of units sold in the previous year.

The advantage of mini-notebooks is that they are relatively new on the market, and people are still very interested in them. Furthermore, bigger machines also mean bigger costs, and considering the economic downturn, it doesn’t come as a surprise that consumers have lost interest in them.