Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White today offers his curtain-raiser for Apple’s (AAPL) event with the media in San Francisco taking place tomorrow, at which it is widely expected the company will unveil its second version of the iPad.

The event is important in more ways than one, writes White.

Not only is whatever’s shown important in itself, but, “we estimate there are well over one hundred tablets coming to market around the world this year.” writes White.

“Assuming a new iPad is unveiled at this event, we believe Apple must make a convincing case for why the iPad 2 is better than the plethora of competitors coming to market, while at the same time persuading iPad 1 buyers to upgrade to iPad 2.”

It will also be the management team’s chance to show how they do during “a crucial new product launch” while CEO Steve Jobs is on medical leave of absence.

White, who has a Buy rating on Apple and a $550 price target, argues that at just 11.8 times this calendar year’s EPS estimates, the shares can “move in an upward trajectory” if the presentation satisfies those imperatives.

White also notes that whatever the hardware and software features of iPad 2, “we still believe the combination of the Apple brand, economies of scale and the company’s powerful ecosystem are reasons enough for Apple to outpace its competitors.”

And remarking on recent speculation that there might be a white iPad, White asks, “When will Apple offer an iPad in a wide array of colors? Given most of the tablet devices seem to be either black or silver, a multi-colored tablet would better appeal to consumers, in our view.”

Hmm. Green iPad? I like it.

Apple shares today are down 10 cents at $353.11.

Update: I would note that Italian Website Setteb.it today speculates that Jobs may show up at tomorrow’s event, though the author, Fabio M. Zambelli, doesn’t say where the information is coming from, just that he has some reassuring information.

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Research firm In-Stat today declared tablet computer shipments will surpass 58 million units annually by 2014, citing data from an online survey of “18,000 technology users and decision makers,” which yielded 1,132 respondents, a sample copy of which was emailed to me.

The general sentiment of the report is fairly bullish — “The following year is slated to be pivotal for tablet adoption,” the authors write, no pun intended, I’m sure.

The numbers, however, are rather low, at least by comparison to some Street estimates, and slightly confusing.

In-Stat projects total tablet computer shipments rising from 13.8 million units last year to 23.7 million this year, 35 million next year, and 46 million in 2013.

As Apple (AAPL) alone shipped 14.8 million iPads from April of last year through December 25th, the 2010 number itself doesn’t seem to quite add up. It would certainly seem not to reflect any sales whatsoever of Samsung’s (SSNLF) “Galaxy Tab” device.

I have a call in to In-Stat to clarify.

Note that JP Morgan’s Mark Moskowitz and colleagues this morning offer a much more aggressive estimate of 47.9 million units just in this calendar year, which is more in keeping with other Street estimates I’ve seen.

Among the forces propelling tablet growth this year, In-Stat writes that, “Applications like complex games that are more immersive, compared to those designed for smartphones or other mobile devices, will be developed at a rapid pace this year, helping to drive content and therefore demand for tablets.”

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The New York Times’s Rob Cox and Robert Cyran today take aim at Apple’s (AAPL) secrecy around governance, stating that the company was wrong to “slip” the results of a vote last week on a succession plan into a federal filing rather than prominently disclosing the results of voting, as many big companies do.

A proposal by the Central Laborer’s Pension Fund of Jacksonville, Illinois, voted down last week at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, nevertheless received 30 percent of the vote in favor, a rarity for a proposal from such a small investor bloc. Apple, the authors assert, need to be less secretive about corporate governance than the company is about its products.

Apple shares today are up $5.73, or 1.7%, at $353.89.

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They’re at it again: the folks at Consumer Reports write on the site’s electronics blog today that their tests have revealed a signal loss issue with the CDMA version of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 4 at Verizon Communications (VZ) that they say is similar to the problem they reported last year with the AT&T (T) model.

As with our tests of the AT&T iPhone 4, putting a finger across one particular gap—the one on the lower left side—caused performance to decline. Bridging this gap is easy to do inadvertently, especially when the phone is in your palm, which might readily and continuously cover the gap during a call. Reception typically dropped notably within 15 seconds or so of the gap being bridged. The iPhone eventually dropped calls when touched at very low signal strength—that is, at levels of around one bar in the phone’s signal-strength meter.

The authors do note that, “The phone performs superbly in most other respects, and using the iPhone 4 with a case can alleviate the problem.”

Will there be another press conference about this?

Apple shares today are up $4.75, or 1.4%, at $347.63.

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Couple of interesting media bits in this morning’s papers:

The Financial Times’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Tim Bradshaw write this morning that Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) are looking to bring new “cloud-based” streaming services to movies and music, citing industry sources.

The authors write that “more than a year after buying Lala, a cloud-based digital music service, Apple is now looking to use the cloud mainly to allow users of its iTunes store to back up their collections and access them from any Apple device.”

And Google “has told labels it wants to launch its own music download store as soon as this March” and is working on signing labels. This would be using Google’s data centers as “a digital locker service that would allow users to keep copies of their media in the cloud,” they write.

And the New York Post’s Claire Atkinson writes that Google is in stalks with movie studios to start a streaming movie service in Europe before eventually bringing it to the U.S. and elsewhere, citing anonymous industry sources. The service is likened by Atkinson to Netflix’s (NFLX) streaming service and to Amazon.com’s (AMZN) “Prime” movie streaming, announced earlier this week.

However, Robert Andrews with PaidContent.org today writes that that a spokesperson for Google’s YouTube operation in the U.K. tells him, “Today, YouTube is focused on building out and improving its current US-based rental offering. While we aim to always push all of our products out globally to our community, we have no plans to launch a European rentals service in the near future.”

Apple shares today are up $2.43, or 0.7%, at $345.31, while Google shares are up $4.36, or 0.7%, at $613.18. Netflix shares are down $1.09, or half a point at $213.92.

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Apple (AAPL) this morning announced a revamp of its MacBook Pro line of portable computers, the most notable changes being the introduction of Intel (INCT) processors with four separate CPUs on the chip, and a new technology for connecting peripherals, developed by Intel, called “Light Peak,” and branded ThunderBolt. (Intel’s press release regarding ThunderBolt was offered up this afternoon.)

And some early reviews are in from the Street:

Maynard Um with UBS reiterates a Buy recommendation on Apple and a $465 price target, writing that the new models could boost Mac results this quarter, with six weeks remaining. “Every incremental 100,000 portable Mac units would add about 2 cents per share to EPS in FYQ2, assuming a slightly lower gross margin,” writes Um.

Abhey Lamba with ISI Group notes that Apple have “dropped one mid-range model,” in the MacBook line, the prior 15-inch model at $1,999, “and raised the selling price of its high end (17 inch) MacBook Pro by $200.” Lamba sees the far higher throughput available through Thunderbolt as boosting the Mac’s multimedia capabilities, with MacBook being the first computer to ship with Light Peak.

And on a side note, AMD (AMD) shares are getting a boost from the new machines’ inclusion of AMD’s “Radeon” graphics chips in the 15-inch and 17-inch models, pushing out parts previously supplied by Nvidia (NVDA), as Nomura Securities analyst Romit Shah notes in a brief piece today.

Shah, who has a Buy rating on AMD and a $12 price target, writes, “While volumes of the MacBook Pro are not significant, we continue to believe that AMD’s relationship with Apple is strengthening.”

Shah expects Apple may at some point use AMD’s “Fusion” application processor (code-named “Krishna”) “for high-volume notebook platforms (MacBooks).”

AMD shares are up 43 cents, or 5%, at $8.98.

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Just when you thought everything had been said about the possibility of a departure of Apple’s (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, over the transom this morning comes an excerpt from a forthcoming book by former Apple exec Jay Elliott, credited with helping to introduce the Macintosh.

Elliott’s book, The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership For a New Generation, is due in stores March 11th, from Perseus/Vanguard, and was written “in partnership” with William L. Simon, who penned iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act In The History of Business. Elliott is currently CEO of a software company called Nuvel, which, among other things, makes apps for the iPhone.

In fact, this may be something of a second collaboration: Simon quoted Elliott extensively in his book, as VP of human resources and a member of the Mac team, to source a slew of assertions about Jobs back in the early days of Apple.

In his book, Elliott writes, “I tell people that Steve is not replaceable as a charismatic, visionary leader of a consumer-product-centric company, but that he can be replaced by a triumvirate to carry on his legacy. Apple will have a new CEO but he, or she, will fill only one part of Steve’s role.”

“Jonathan Ive, the modest Brit who breathed life into the designs of the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, will continue to dream up designs for products everyone wants to use and own. Phil Schiller will continue to dream up product concepts, laying the path for the future of technology.”

As for COO Tim Cook, “he has proven himself in this role since he has already so successfully kept all the separate pieces functioning during Steve’s absences.”

And Elliott offers some food for thought about long-time CEOs: “It has been very unusual for a Founder of a company to still be in charge over 30 years later, but some prominent ones are examples of the past that have all the characteristics of Apple. When Walt Disney left Disney, when Akio Morito left Sony, David Packard & Bill Hewitt left HP, all these leaders had put very strong organizations in place to keep their companies on course, and it worked.”

Apple shares today are down $1.75, or half a point, at $340.87.

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Interesting ruckus today regarding shares of digital camera image sensor maker Omnivision Technologies (OVTI), which R.W. Baird wrote about with some concern this morning: the stock has since found a couple of defenders.

The stock is currently down $2.18, or almost 9%, at $23.29, and had been as low as $22.16. Note that OVTI is to report January quarterly results tomorrow after the bell.

Baird’s Tristan Gerra cut his price target on the stock to $24 from $34, and reiterated a Neutral rating, writing that the company is losing business in Apple‘s (AAPL) iPhone a, that the company’s having trouble manufacturing its “BSI” sensor product, and that its losing share in sensors in PCs, thus ceding the market to Samsung (SSNLF) and others.

The BSI product, a new kind of sensor that gathers light at the back of the chip (hence the acronym, for “Back Side Illumination“), is currently in its second generation, and Omnivision has trumpeted the advantages the chip’s design has for capturing low-light images and hi-def video, all within the narrow confines of mobile devices. Last week, the company said a BSI2 chip for 8-megapixel cameras is expected to ship in volume in the second half of this year.

However, Gerra writes that his “field checks” suggest the part will not be ready by the time Apple ships the iPhone 5, which he expects this July. (Gerra does not expect a later launch date, as FBR Capital’s Craig Berger had speculated yesterday.)

Because of that, Gerra thinks that Sony (SNE) may win the slot in the iPhone 5. He also thinks is having trouble securing manufacturing capacity, and that its relationships with chip foundries and large customers “may be frayed for some time.”

Hans Mosesmann of Raymond James came to the stock’s defense this afternoon. He has an Outperform rating on the shares, and questions the logic of Gerra’s report. By Mosesmann’s reckoning, Gerra is suggesting both that Omnivision is capacity constrained in producing the BSI2, but also that it is loosing market share, which he suggests may be contradictory statements.

“We believe OmniVision is constrained becasue demand is stronger than expected. This is ordinarily a good thing, and, in this instance, we believe a good thing.” While Sony may get some Apple business this year, he doesn’t think Apple will give all of it to Sony, as they’re a competitor and it’s not proven Sony can deliver parts Apple needs in volume.

I should add that Gleacher & Co.’s Doug Freedman had a note yesterday acknowledging what he believes are some problems with yield in BSI product at foundry Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM). Freedman, who has a Buy rating on OVTI shares, advised buying if any damage should come to earnings in tomorrow’s report: he thinks the stock is one to own for longer-term payoff.

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Apple’s (AAPL) annual shareholder meeting is rolling out today in Cupertino, and at least one item on the docket appears to have been shot down: Apple “loyalists” have shot down a proposal by the Central Laborer’s Pension Fund of Jacksonville, Illinois to demand Apple have a formal succession plan on file, write Garett Sloan and Kaja Whitehouse of the New York Post this morning.

While the final vote could change, the Nays appear to have the day. I noted the ballot proposal yesterday, as it was the topic of a Dow Jones Newswires preview.

But there are plenty of other things to think about at this shareholder meeting. Herewith, some thoughts from the Street this morning:

Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray writes this morning that the reason Apple’s shares trade at just 13 times his calendar 2012 earnings projection is that the Street thinks Apple’s earnings growth will slow to just 15% to 20% in 2012 (versus 28% or greater this fiscal year ending in September.)

But they’re underestimating the upside that can come from the iPhone, he thinks, “The biggest variable in Apple’s growth.” Apple could sell 200 million iPhones in 2015, if the iPhone tracks the smartphone market, which would mean, “Over 40% of Apple’s business is growing at 35% in 2013 to 2015,” he muses. (iPhone is currently 39% of Apple’s revenue.)

As a consequence, a 25% to 30% growth rate for earnings “could be achievable through 2015,” Munster believes. In particular, with Apple making China one of its top priorities, Munster expects the company to add China Telecom (CHA) to its iPhone carriers (China Unicom (CHU) already offers the iPhone) now that a CDMA version is available that will work with Telecom’s network. (Something that’s been speculated on quite a bit of late.) China Telecom would add a potential 90 million subscribers, and Indian carrier Reliance would add another 110 million potential iPhone subscribers. Munster notes that Apple has just a fraction, maybe 2%, so far, of the 157 million subscribers at China Unicom, his point being that there’s many pockets of growth.

Munster models Apple selling 72.7 million iPhones this calendar year, up from 47.5 million last year, and sees that rising to 96.5 million next year. That’s without counting the additional potential subs from China Telecom, etc.

Munster is modeling 28% earnings growth this calendar year and 18% next year, and he thinks the stock deserves an 18 times multiple on 2012′s projected $26.85 per share in earnings, for a price target of $483.

Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White weighs in with some thoughts on how the rumor mill went into high-gear yesterday, with stuff flying back and forth about delays in Apple’s iPad — rumors that proved to be false.

After some last-minute design changes that resulted in overtime hours during the recent Chinese New Year, writes White, production of the iPad 2 now appears to be tracking roughly in line with the schedule that the first iPad had last year, he writes, which “sets up well an April launch date” rather than the rumors of a summer introduction. Note that Kara Swisher with All Things D yesterday wrote that Apple appears to be planning some event for Wednesday, which has since been picked up by the New York Times, etc.

White reiterates a Buy recommendation and a $550 price target.

And Mike Abramsky with RBC Capital this morning reiterates an Outperform rating, writing that in a hypothetical scenario where CEO Steve Jobs were to depart the company, it wouldn’t materially affect the “buying intentions” of Apple customers.

Abramsky cites data from a study commissioned by RBC, done by ChangeWave, taken between January 31st and February 9th, of 3,091 respondents, that showed “93% would likely continue buying Apple products” if Steve Jobs had left the company. He compares that to the same study taken back in 2008 that showed 18% of people surveyed said they would be less likely to buy from Apple.

Is it only me or does this seem very vague, and rather like something that no one can answer in the abstract? Well, but that’s always true of surveys, take it for what you will.

This is proof of Apple’s brand loyalty, product pipeline, and management team, which will sustain the company’s momentum, he thinks. “Longer term, risks of the possible departure of CEO Jobs remain unclear and may still emerge, as CEO Jobs is widely viewed as Apple’s chief innovator, dealmaker, leader, motivator, and is deeply involved in minute decisions,” writes Abramsky.

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Shares of Netflix (NFLX) have traded down $13.45, or almost 6%, to $222.06 today on Amazonc.com’s (AMZN) announcement of its streaming video subscription service, an additional offering for those who subscribe to the company’s “Prime” service for $79 per year.

Amazon shares traded down $6.11, or 3.3%, to $180.39.

With the lowest price for Netflix’s streaming video service being $7.99 per month, or $95.88 per year, the Amazon debut is a “modest negative” for Netflix, writes Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney, who has a Buy rating on shares of Amazon and a $190 price target.

The announcement is a “strategic positive” for Amazon, writes Mahaney, as it is “consistent with its move into Digital Media offerings,” and it also “helps leverage AMZN’s core data center capabilities (we note that Netflix is a key customer of Amazon’s Cloud Services offering for the Online streaming),” he writes.

However, some other individuals stepped in to defend Netflix. Oppenheimer & Co.’s Jason Helfstein reiterated an Outperform rating on Netflix shares, writing that the Amazon video catalog is “inferior to that of Netflix,” by his casual assessment. Also, he notes that Engadget and other blogs are stating that the quality of Amazon’s video streams is “below that of Netflix.” Also, he expects Amazon’s service will not initially be supported on some mobile devices, such as Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, an advantage for Netflix.

Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson similarly reiterated an Overweight rating on shares of Netflix, and a $240 price target, based on Amazon’s having only 5,000 movies and TV titles available, while Netflix offers 20,000 titles. Amazon’s service will be viewable on 21.2 million “TV-connected devices,” he figures, while Netflix is available on 94.3 million such devices.

While more competition is a negative overall — and Olson expects more competitive offerings from outfits such as Coinstar’s (CSTR) Redbox DVD rental kiosk unit, the “most significant threat from new competition in the space is the potential for rising content costs,” he believes. And “At this point, the only company generating enough revenue from subscription video to spend on an improving library without taking a significant hit to the bottom line is Netflix,” he argues.

In related news, Netflix today said it signed a two-year, non-exclusive deal with CBS (CBS) to stream episodes from CBS’s TV catalog, including “Flashpoint,” “Medium,” “Cheers,” and “Frasier.”

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