There can be no denying that the new fad of the moment is the tablet. We thought we’d seen tablet fads before, about ten years or so ago, but now that the iPad has made it big, the floodgates are opening.
Here are a few more tablet stories to come out in the last few days, in no particular order.
inMedia: Engadget notes that inMedia has announced an Android 2.1 tablet, and is noticeably unimpressed by the picture and specs (which include 802.11b and g wifi but no mention of n, 7” and 10” screens, HDMI, a camera, and more). No mention of price yet.
Lenovo: Liliputing says that Lenovo is going to launch a “LePad” slate computer in China in December, and is also coming out with a laptop/removable tablet device, the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, in January. The IdeaPad is actually both a PC and a tablet: the keyboard base contains the inner workings of a PC, while the tablet part has the usual ARM CPU. These devices will presumably run Android (or at least, the tablet portion of the IdeaPad will), but specs don’t seem to be available yet.
ViewSonic: Another Liliputing piece mentions a 10” 1024×600 ARM-based slate computer from Viewsonic (pictured above left), running Android 2.2. The $529 price tag looks a little high, but its specs seem reasonable enough.
Motorola: Fierce Wireless reports on Motorola’s co-CEO Sanjay Jha announcing the company hopes to release an Android tablet early next year.
"I see the tablet market as an opportunity; no cannibalization with smartphones," Jha said, referring to Apple’s popular tablet. "iPad is more an extension of iPhone than a migration of a Macintosh. I think that is a natural expansion for us."
At this point, it’s looking like the tablet market is going to be even more crowded than the dedicated e-book reader market. But one thing about this sudden surplus of Android tablets: if they start developing a significant userbase, there will be more interest in reading e-books on them and more apps will become available.
All ‘announced’ or ‘planned’.
Let’s see how many actually arrive and how many are realistic devices, and at what price. It’s easy to ‘announce’.
I second Howard’s comment. I remember the years I spent waiting for a good eink device before they started hitting the market for real. I did buy an iPad, but then I took it back. It is an excellent device and I’m sure that it fits the bill for many of you, but it just didn’t match with the way I work.
On the Android front, I suspect that many of the 2.2 devices will work, but won’t be great. Google has said to wait for 3.0. My guess is that if 3.0 is the first O/S intended for a tablet it will take something like 3.1, or later to get a mature offering. It’ll also take a few months to get a good set of apps from independent developers. My guess is that Christmas 2011 will be the real start of the Android tablet.
Michael
If you can play the waiting game, then this is very much a good time to not buy a tablet. It’s not just the Android version aspect, but also that in the next 6 months or so we should see a new generation of CPUs for mobile devices starting to come out – the Cortex A9. It will provide a significant boost in computing power and also come in dual core variants which will make multi-tasking on tablets a much more pleasant experience.
If someone is interested in getting into ebooks right now, it’s probably a better idea to go for a cheap eink pearl device as a stopgap measure than investing in an expensive iPad or Android tablet. A lot is going to happen in the coming year for multi-function devices.
I also believe referring to this surge in the Tablet device, in the guise initially of the iPad – as a “Fad” is a bit rich and without justification.
I think it’s at least as much a fad as the netbook craze of a couple of years ago. We’ve gone from one tablet on the market to everybody and his brother planning a tablet on the strength of the popularity of just one device. If that’s not a fad, then what is it?
It is most certainly not a fad. A fad is a sudden surge in something or an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, esp. one that is short-lived and without basis in the object’s qualities. The Tablet device, especially the iPad has proved itself to be strongly based on quality and usefulness. The ‘craze’ you speak of in netbooks, another device format that most certainly proved useful and worthwhile, has faded somewhat because the Tablet is proving so effective. These are not fads. They may be phases in device development. They may be steps along the way. They are most certainly not fads.
🙂
🙂 Sorry Chris that came out a bit more strident than it was meant to .. hope we get ‘edit’ functions soon..