Asus $399 Android tablet to arrive in March
Richard Doherty, an independent analyst at the Envisioneering Group, says more than 100 companies will attempt to ride on Apple's iPad coattails with their own versions of a tablet computer. Toshiba, Motorola, Research in Motion, Asus, Acer and Vizio are among the companies expected to unveil tablets at the multiday tech orgy that is the CES.
"There's no question Apple blindsided everyone in the industry with the iPad (last year)," said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at technology-research firm Creative Strategies. "Everyone's playing catch-up."
The show could attract as many as 140,000 attendees this year, up from 126,000 in 2010, said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, which stages the event. The iPad was the best-reviewed tech product of the year and created a new category in tablet computing, with a portable entertainment device that ditched the keyboard for a touch-screen and made it more fun to watch movies and TV shows, play games and read books.
Helping the companies with their tablets is Apple competitor Google, whose Android operating system has overtaken the iPhone as the fastest-growing platform for smartphones.
A version of Android created for phones is being used for many of the new tablets.
Tablets from Toshiba and Motorola won't be introduced until the second half of the year. Toshiba Vice President Jeff Barneysaid he won't release his new 10-inch Toshiba tablet (expected price: about $499) until Honeycomb is ready for release because the extra power is needed to run the unit, he said.
Flash comes up again
Many iPad clones are expected to follow in footsteps of Samsung's Galaxy Tab, offering what consumers see as important omissions in the current iPad. The Tab and Toshiba's Tablet, for instance, have two cameras for video and photos, a USB port and a slot for SD memory cards for photos. They work with Adobe Flash software, which is used to play more than 75 percent of online video. Apple doesn't support Flash for various reasons.
"One of the reasons the iPad was so popular is because so many iPhone users already knew how to operate it, since it has the same operating system," Barney said.
Google declined to comment for this story. But at a recent industry conference, Andy Rubin, a Google vice president, showed a prototype of the upcoming Motorola tablet which, unlike the iPad, had no buttons on the device. All directions are done via touch-screen.
Is smaller better?
In competing with Apple, Samsung says the biggest selling points have been offering a smaller tablet computer "that fits in the pocket" and being part of the Android family.
But not all device manufacturers are working with Google. Research in Motion's PlayBook will use its own BlackBerry operating system. Hewlett-Packard is expected to show off a new tablet at the CES using Palm's WebOS system.
And Microsoft, which has been shut out of the tablet market even though the original concept was touted by co-founder Bill Gates in the 1990s, is expected to show, but not offer for sale, a new line of tablets powered by Windows.
But the 1,000-pound gorilla at the show will be the product that isn't there: Apple's sequel to the original iPad, which could be announced within days or weeks of the event. The sequel is expected to have most of the new features that will be touted by rivals, except for Flash.
During a recent conference call with analysts, Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicted that the new tabs would be "dead on arrival." The chief problem, he said, is that many competing devices will look too similar to the iPad and be too small.
by Jefferson Graham USA Today Jan. 7, 2011 12:00 AM
CEOs show off tablets
