Tablets: 2011 Watch List

on Jan 30 in ebook publishing, newspaper and magazine publishing, Sliders, Uncategorized by

Now that CES 2011 has wrapped up, one thing’s clear: 2011 is to be the year of the tablet. Sure, there’s a bevy of dual-core smartphones coming out, and those are cool, but tablets are the real story this year.

Outside of Apple, you can walk into any computer store today and be hard pressed to find a tablet on-hand. By the end of this year, and moving into 2012, that will change.

That’s because up until now, the iPad has been the only real, commercially and widely available consumer tablet computer on the market.

Now everyone’s jumping in, from big names like HP-Palm, to smaller ones like Notion Ink with their Adam. And the reason this is happening is because Apple has demonstrated that there’s a market for it.

Copy and Paste Strategy

This seems to be the common denominator for tech companies today. Wait for Apple to innovate and demonstrate market acceptance, then copy and enter that same market. Microsoft has followed a similar strategy for ages, like in the beginning when they created Excel from VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3; Internet Explorer from Netscape Navigator; and so on.

But the competition today has really intensified, because people can innovate so much faster than they could even just ten years ago. And that’s because we’re at a higher peak in this information age: more and more people are “wired”, and therefore exposed to the same repositories of information that everyone else is. This is an underlying cause of accelerated information “spread”. One little seed of an idea, or hint of someone doing something online, and there could be dozens of competitors on the market before the person with the original idea even had a chance to blink.

The flood of new tablets poised to come to market could very well be a sign of these times: rapid innovation and intense competition. Like Steve Jobs said in an interview in Rolling Stone in 1994:

The problem is, in hardware you can’t build a computer that’s twice as good as anyone else’s anymore. Too many people know how to do it. You’re lucky if you can do one that’s one and a third times better or one and a half times better. And then it’s only six months before everybody else catches up. But you can do it in software.

If that was true then, it seems doubly so today. As much as Apple innovates, releasing break-through products that both create and change industries, the competition is always lurking, and, as demonstrated by the tablet computer market, can respond incredibly quickly.

It hasn’t even been a year since the iPad originally hit the market back in April, 2010, and the number of tablets on their way into consumerville is staggering. At CES this year, there were over 80 different iterations of tablets.

5 tablets to watch out for, in rank order

1. HP-Palm (Topaz / Opal)

This is one we’ve been waiting for, and we’re really excited about it. This will be ‘the’ iPad competitor. That’s because Topaz / Opal will run HP-Palm’s WebOS, the best mobile operating system in the world in our opinion. We like it because it’s the best implementation of multi-tasking compared to the rest. Its release date is expected to be in late February to early-March.

The specs for Topaz (Opal will be a smaller iteration ~7″ screen):

Running WebOS
Dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 at 1.2GHz
Integrated Adreno 220 GPU
9.7″ XGA 1024 x 768
1.5 lb.
512MB DDR2
16GB/ 32GB/ 64g eMMC
1.3 MP front-facing camera
Bluetooth: 2.1 + EDR, 802.11 b/g/n
Accelerometer, eCompass, Gyro, Light Sensor, Microphone
2 integrated speakers with Beats Audio, 3.5mm audio jack
Battery: 8hrs, using two 3150mAh cells

Take a look at a walk through video of the WebOS’s interface to get an idea of what it’s like. It’s easy to see how well it’ll translate to tablet computers. WebOS 2.0 Tour:

2. Motorola Xoom

The Xoom will be competitive because it’s backed by a big company, has the marketing and hardware punch to go along with it, and serves as a flagship Android 3.0 Honeycomb device. Its release date is expected to be in February.

Here are the specs:

Running Android 3.0
10.1″ display, 1200 x 800
Dual Core 1 Ghz CPU NVIDIA Tegra 2
1GB RAM
32 GB inbuilt memory with microSD Card slot
10 hr video playback battery life
5 MP rear-facing camera with Flash and 720p HD video capture
2MP front-facing video calling camera
Wifi(n) Bluetooth 2.1 (3G & 4G)

And the tour:

3. Blackberry PlayBook

If there was any device more hyped up outside of Apple’s gear, this is it. RIM has been teasing us with their answer to the iPad for months. There’s word that it’s finally going to come to market in the next few months. Because of the hype, the fact that it has true multi-tasking, and because it’s backed by one of the top smartphone makers in the world, the PlayBook will gain traction in the market.

However, we’re unsure about its staying power because QNX, the new operating system that RIM is using for it, hasn’t been demonstrated to both consumers and developers. The demo videos look really good, but…

While RIM seems to be leaning toward a push for development under Adobe Flash/Air, it may not be the best strategy in the face of companies like Apple with widely used and adopted developer tools that can produce powerful, native, high performance mobile Apps.

We’ll have wait and see what happens with QNX.

Here are the specs:

Running QNX
7″ LCD display, 1024 x 600
1 GHz dual-core processor
1 GB RAM
Wi-Fi® 802.11 a/b/g/n (3G & 4G)
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
3 MP high-definition front-facing camera
5 MP high-definition rear-facing camera
1080p HD video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV HDMI video output
Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports

Here’s the tour at CES 2011:

4. Samsung Galaxy Tab (2)

The Android-based Galaxy Tab will continue to gain ground. That’s because it was an early-mover: Samsung has sold over 2 million Galaxy Tabs since it debuted in September last year. Second, because it’s a pretty good tablet. It’s got a high-pixel density screen (169 dpi vs. iPad 1′s 132), a small form-factor, it’s light, and runs Android, all with the hardware to support it.

Look for beefed up, dual-core versions this year: we may even get a 10″ if we’re lucky. Tab 2 may release in February.

Rumoured specs:

Running Android 3.0 Honeycomb
1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor
1GB RAM
7″ 2048×1200 (4:3) Super-AMOLED display
8 MP rear-facing camera with 1080p video recording
3 MP front-facing camera
Dual LED flash and a front
802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 (3G)
1 USB port on the side and a microSD card slot
64GB of internal storage
Accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and barometer

If anyone can pull these specs off, Samsung would be one of the only ones I would bet on.

A Tab 2 teaser:

5. Toshiba

This came out of nowhere. Toshiba looks to have a pretty neat tablet on their hands, with excellent marketing. Because they’re such a big name in consumer tech, and because the design and feature-set of this device looks solid, we’re betting it’ll gain traction this year, too.

The only thing we question are the USB ports… they’re sort of superfluous when it comes to tablet computers, especially in a wireless world. The Toshiba Tablet is expected to launch this spring.

The specs:

Running Android 3.0
5 MP rear, 2 MP front-facing camera
User replaceable battery
10.1″, 16:10, 720p (1280 x 800) screen
Nvidia Tegra 2 Dual-core processor
Motion sensor, GPS, Compass, ambient light sensors
SD card slot
2 USB slots
Mic/headphone jack
Interchangeable, non-slip back cover

Have a peak

Market Leader: iPad

It goes without saying that the iPad is thus far the market-leader. Apple’s sold 15 million of them so far. They have over 80% worldwide tablet market-share. We don’t expect that to change right away, either. That’s because the iPad is an excellent piece of hardware, with some really good software to go along with it. The rumoured specs for iPad 2 are as follows:

Running iOS 4.x or later
9.7″ “Retina Display”, 2048 x 1536 over iPad 1′s 1024 by 768 resolution
Multi-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU over iPad 1′s single-core A8
Dual-core SGX543 GPU over iPad 1′s single-core SGX535
Thinner and lighter, with rounded corners and a flat back
No home button
512 MB-1 GB RAM over iPad 1′s 256 MB RAM
SD slot, maybe
Dual GSM/CDMA

Refs

CES 2011
Notion Ink Adam
Galaxy Tab sells 2 million, Tab 2 coming in Feb.
HP-Palm February 9 event
Galaxy Tab 2 rumours
iPad 2 rumours

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Author: Ryan Vetter

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