Asus Stakes Claim In Tablets Market

Asus has won critical acclaim for its early tablets, including the quad-core Transformer Prime TF201 that was debuted last year and the new quad-core Transformer Pad TF300T that will be available in some U.S. retail stores next week.

And it continues to improve its place in the crowded market — jumping into the Top 5 list of suppliers for the first time in 2011, according to the latest research from IDC. Asus ranked fifth in tablet shipments in both the U.S. and world in 2011 with a 2.3% share of the U.S. tablet market and a 2.5% share of the worldwide market.

Apple’s iPad remained at the top of both lists.

Though Asus still lags somewhat behind the market leaders, its influence on the market is clearly on the rise and could move it further up the tablet list, analysts say.

For instance, along with launching an array of powerful higher-priced new tablets, Asus is reported to be Google’s choice to supply a low-priced $200 device said to be called Google Play. The Google tablet would run Ice Cream Sandwich and a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, reports say.

The reports suggest Google is looking to launch the new tablet at its Google I/O developer conference in late June.

Source…

Is Samsung Flip Flopping?

Samsung is apparently rethinking its decision not to bring Android 4 to the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab.

Earlier the company stated that neither device could be updated due to the size of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. The news created a bit of an issue with users sharpening scythes, pitchforks and lighting torches to go on a lynching. Now word on the street is that the company is considering backing down on its decision due to “strong customer demand.”

Source…

Will Android Tablets Get Ice Cream Sandwich?

Google just held its Galaxy Nexus event in Hong Kong and we read just about every report and release in detail, only to find that Google didn’t even mention Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 for tablets, which is somewhat surprising.

At this time, there is no official information if and when Android 4.0 comes to tablets. Since Android 4.0 looks like the lovechild of Gingerbread and Honeycomb and gets a few new options, it’s likely that we will see Android 4.0 on tablets, with a few tweaks of course.

Google just don’t want to talk about it, at least not yet. Since Google chaps already said that Android 2.3 capable phones should be able to run Android 4.0 this definitely applies to any Android 3.x tablets since most of them have dual-core processors and quite powerful hardware to back it up.

Source…

Best Buy Stuck With TouchPads

Best Buy is sitting on a boatload of 200,000 HP Touchpads and wants to send them back to HP.

According to Allthingsd, Best Buy stocked its warehouses with around 270,000 HP Touchpad tablets. However, the retailer has been unable to sell the tablets and has only sold at most 25,000, even with a $100 discount, so Best Buy is requesting that HP take back all of the unsold devices.

Furthermore, it is being said that things are so bad that HP EVP Todd Bradley might have to go to Best Buy’s headquarters and plead with executives to exercise patience. It appears that the Touchpad is suffering from poor sales in many stores across the country, with Wal-Mart also said to be an unhappy camper.

Update…HP will stop making the HP Touchpads…….

Read More…..

iPad Rivals Have Better Chance In Europe

Would-be rivals to Apple’s iPad have a better chance in Europe than they do in the United States, but they need to drop prices fast to grasp the opportunity, IT research firm Forrester said on Tuesday.

Apple’s relatively small retail presence in Europe — with 52 stores compared with 238 in the United States — offers a chance to the likes of Samsung, Acer and Research in Motion, Forrester said.

But their prices cannot yet compete with Apple, which has far larger scale in the tablet market and an efficient supply chain. Forrester said emerging challengers from China and Taiwan would likely step in soon with cheaper offerings.

“There is this opportunity for iPad challengers, but the competition is very fragmented. Competing with Apple will require a different approach from what we’ve seen so far,” said analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, the author of the Forrester report.

Apple still has the tablet-computer market almost to itself after launching the iPad a year and a half ago. It has sold close to 30 million iPads, whose prices start at about $500.

Forrester expects Apple to sell 80 percent of all consumer tablets in the United States and 70 percent in Europe this year.

It expects 2011 worldwide tablet sales to reach 48 million units, with half of those sold in the United States, 30 percent in Europe, 15 percent in Asia and 5 percent in Latin America.

Forrester surveyed almost 14,000 online adult consumers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Britain, and also interviewed product strategists from manufacturers, telecommunications operators and retailers.

Read More…

HTC To Have Many Tablets

Smartphone maker HTC plans to introduce a range of different tablet computers to gain a its share in the fast-growing market, a company executive said on Tuesday.

The global market for tablets, started only last year with Apple’s iPad, will likely grow to 108 million devices next year, compared with just 17.6 million in 2010, according to research firm Gartner.

“I really believe that the tablet market is really going to be a big market in the future and this is just the start,” HTC Europe head Florian Seiche told the Reuters Global Technology Summit.

“In five years’ time, schools will have tablets probably instead of physical notebooks. I think that’s going to be such a massive wave of additional penetration in society… I think we can’t even guess the potential.”

Read More…