iPad

Who said Apple has to dominate the tablet market? As of now they are, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change. According to CNet, Apple shipped 4.7 million tablets last quarter. But hot…err warm… on their heels, Samsung has shipped 850,000 units – and that’s without the newly launched Galaxy Tab 10.1. Following a close third, and could even overtake Samsung, Acer shipped 800,000 units that same quarter. This is promising news for a diverse tablet market.

There’s no reason why Apple can’t become a minority player by the end of the year. Just these two companies alone have a third of Apple’s share.  There is also Motorola, ASUS, LG, HTC and even the Nook by Barnes and Noble.
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The Galaxy Tab 10.1 gets a lot of flack for arriving in its newly svelte body late to the tablet game with a 3.1 update.  But it is undoubtedly the best Honeycomb tablet out there.  Immediately, it was my favorite tablet to use, even with its buggy 3.0 software at Google I/O.  With the much improved 3.1 update, The Tab is now a complete system that will only get better.

Rather than do a review, I’m going to answer a bigger question: Why get a Galaxy Tab instead of an iPad 2.  And I’m not going to give reasons like “You are a geek and love the Google ecosystem”.  Here we go:

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Is Motorola pulling a “Samsung” and going back to the drawing board with their XOOM, prettying and slimming it to match Apple’s iPad 2?  The Verizon ad (screenshot above, video below) seems to suggest just that.  Hopefully that channel inventory is ready to move because who is going to buy a XOOM now that a thinner version is coming down the pike?

Full video below (via Droid Life):
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More trouble in Microsoft land as Bloomberg reports that Microsoft device manufacturers are complaining about the software giant’s meddling in their affairs:

Microsoft Corp.  is putting “troublesome” restrictions on makers of processors used to run the coming Windows tablet-computer operating system, Acer Inc.  Chairman and Chief Executive Officer J.T. Wang said.

“They’re really controlling the whole thing, the whole process,” Wang said at the Computex trade show in Taipei without identifying the restrictions. Chip suppliers and PC makers “all feel it’s very troublesome,” he said.

Can you even imagine a PC manufacturer standing up to Microsoft publicly in a pre-iPad world?  While Acer is moving to Google for many of their tablet products, and even ChromeOS for one of their notebooks, Acer is still one of the three biggest Windows PC manufacturers on the planet and of course is expected to make Windows 8 slates…
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Strategy Analytics ranked Samsung the #1 Android tablet maker and the world’s #2 tablet company behind Apple in Q1 2011. It took them a month to sell a millionth Galaxy S II smartphone in Korea  and brag about it  on their Flickr account with the above image.

Samsung is content on releasing more Android tablets despite that pending legal spat with Apple, which is accusing them of stealing the iPad’s and iPhone’s design, software features and hardware engineering with the Galaxy-branded tablets and smartphones. The Wall Street Journal quoted this morning Samsung’s J.K. Shin who underscored his company’s determinacy to release more Honeycomb tablets this year as they “continue to work with Android on future tablets”. Their senior vice president of sales and marketing Younghee Lee added:

Android is the fastest-growing platform and the market direction is headed toward Android so we’re riding the wave. When there is a market need for our own software, we will consider it but that’s not our plan at the moment.

Samsung also says it’ll continue offering tablet PCs in multiple screen sizes as a way of distinguishing themselves from Apple. Asked to comment on that pending lawsuit with Apple, Shin responded:

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Prepare to be impressed:

A few months back, we unveiled Project Kal-El – our next-gen Tegra super chip – as the world’s first mobile quad-core processor. Kal-El combines a battery-friendly, powerhouse of a quad-core processor with a 12-core NVIDIA GPU that supports 3D stereo.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBvaDtshLY8&HD=1&w=670&h=400]

NVIDIA via BGR
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Nvidia CEO Huang Jen-Hsun blamed slow sales of Android slates to a multitude of factors ranging from the lack of expertise at retail, sub-par marketing, higher price points and software. Extending the opinion, Asian sources from notebook vendors warn that lack of content is to blame for weak demand for Android slates. It’s the software, stupid, they argue, reports DigiTimes.

The sources pointed out that most of the applications that are executable on Android 2.x are turned out to be un-executable on Android 3.0, while any application that can run on iPhone can be directly transfer to iPad for execution. Since there are only limited applications specifically designed for Android 3.0, it has significantly lagged demand of Android 3.0-based tablet PC.

“Apple would have achieved a much bigger market share than it already has if the player decided to wait”, the source admitted. Android 3.1 should resolve all those issues when it becomes available in the second half of this year, the source concluded. Most apps designed for Android 2.x smartphones apps either don’t scale well or “turn out to be un-executable on Android 3.0”, the source noted, blaming poor demand for Honeycomb tablets on a limited number of tablet-specific software experiences. Apple, of course, is employing quite the opposite tactics focused on promoting apps tailored to the iPad.

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