Ben Rudolph, Director of Corporate Communications at Parallels, takes on the rumor about Apple adding its own virtualization into its up and coming operating system, codenamed Leopard.  On his Blog site, he writes:

Many of those center on the "super secret" features in Leopard, Apple's forthcoming new version of OS X. Seems that the prevailing rumor (and I stress the "RUMOR" part) is that Leopard will have some sort of virtualization technology in it, similar to what Parallels has been offering for more than a year. This seems very unlikely to me, because unlike creating a "normal" application, virtualization is built on core, proprietary technology, and its not very easy to build that technology from scratch. Our core team worked for years exclusively in the virtualization space for years to get Parallels technology to where it is today, so it would seem that Apple, even with their great track record for innovation and speedy development, and plethora of outstanding developers and resources, would be able to - or even want to - put virtualization technology that really works together in such a short timeframe.

This is purely from a technical standpoint; its a whole different question how tightly Apple wants to support non-OS X operating systems via internal tools. That's a big picture kind of question that only Mr. Jobs can answer. Right now, we know that Apple is a strong partner and we're working very closely together on development, marketing (I'm sure you've all seen us on the "You can even run Windows" page from the "Get a Mac" campaign), and sales, and that both Parallels and Apple are happy with the relationship we've developed over the past 18 months.

Read or comment on Ben's original post, here.