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Apple event set for Jan. 27: Will tablet be announced?

Apple has set Jan. 27 as the date for an eagerly awaited announcement, which many analysts are predicting will involve a new multimedia tablet from the Cupertino company known for its iPhones, iPods and Macs.

Invitations for the San Francisco event were e-mailed to news organizations Monday morning. The invitation-only event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, which the company frequently uses as a venue for announcing new products to reporters, analysts and industry representatives. The invitation does not specify whether CEO Steve Jobs will attend.

Although the company has officially declined to comment, industry insiders and analysts have been speculating for weeks that Apple will be entering the market for a lightweight, portable tablet computer, designed for consumers to interact with digital games, books, movies and other types of content.

Several companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Lenovo, already have tablets on the market, while Amazon and other companies are seeing favorable sales of e-readers, which are tablet-like devices designed specifically for reading books.

But analysts have suggested that Apple could upend the market, given its previous success at revolutionizing other product categories, such as digital music players and smartphones.