With the thriving success of Apple’s iPad with over 4 million units sold, since its launch in April, the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) has joined major players in the electronics industry to rush into the market with their versions of the tablet.
After the huge success of the iPad, all major hardware vendors of PCs and mobile devices are coming out with new tablets in the next few months, including Apple with a smaller version of the popular product. Analysts estimate the market for tablet devices (over 6” screen size) to be around 25 million units for 2011.
In 2011, consumers will have multiple choices – from Apple’s iPad, to Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Dell’s Streak, Hewlett Packard’s Slate 500, and Toshiba’s Folio 100 to Android tablets.
There is serious buzz in the market about RIM (makers of the BlackBerry phones) coming out with a tablet based in their own OS. This could be what the business users are waiting for to carry in their cases for a short trip or to take home instead of their laptops. With the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) launching the PlayBook early next year, the tablet is set to become the next big device in the New Year.
Apart from RIM, laptop maker Acer, PC maker Asus and Toshiba and cell phone makers Nokia and LG too are set to enter the tablet market.
There are some Android tablets in the market now, mostly small devices from Asian manufacturers trying to get a piece of the cake before the big guys get in, but I would wait until the serious names release their products.
Samsung has already introduced their Galaxy tablet, based on the popular Android OS and a 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, begging to ship before the holidays.
HP is coming out with an Android and a webOS tablet early next year, and they are talking about a Windows tablet too. I believe the webOS tablet could be the real deal for a different OS with a lot of possibilities that the previous Palm devices did not exploit.
n Oxman of the Consumer Electronics Association as saying.
“This could easily be called the year of the tablet. Apple kicked off the craze in January when it unveiled its iPad. By the time the iPad went on sale in April, the device had racked up so much buzz (and pre-sales) it was clear Apple had produced another hit.
“The electronics industry took notice. With the holidays approaching, everyone from PC makers to cellphone manufacturers, monitor suppliers and booksellers is racing to release some version of a portable, touch-screen computer,” Forbes says.
The tablets vary in their prices, weight, size and operating systems. At the lower end, France’s Archos tablets will cost from $100 to $300, while HP’s Slate 500 is priced at $799 as it is aimed at business people.
BlackBerry’s PlayBook is seven inches in size and weigh much less than the iPad. To distinguish the PlayBook from other tablets, the BlackBerry maker has developed a new operating system for it. Most of the other tablets will run the Android operating system.
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