While all of the tablet PC and e-reader wannabes work vigorously at the engineering drawing board trying to build a better mousetrap, Apple continues to sell millions of iPads, and Amazon continues to dominate e-readers with the Kindle.Asus has revealed the most significant announcement is about an Android-based Eee Pad set to debut next March…..
Taiwanese tech giant ASUS will be launching its first Android tablet – the Eee Pad – next March, said CEO Jerry Shen at his company’s quarterly earnings call, and reported on by PCWorld.
He’s pledging that the 10-inch Eee Pad EP101TC, due to ship in March, will cost under $399 — and if the Notion Ink Adam is any indication that means it’ll be $398. Then there’s the EP121, a 12-inch tablet running Windows 7 that’s positioned rather higher up in the market, as indicated by its $1,000 price tag. Shen says this high cost is due to that docking station able to intriguingly transform it into a laptop when it ships around December or January.
Apparently Shen also said there will be a 12 inch version coming out on December or January, running an Intel Core 2 Duo and Windows 7. This will be the EP121 we pictured at Computex and is expected to come in at a grand, complete with a docking station that effectively turns it into a notebook. For that kind of money, it should turn into two notebooks.
The goal is to ship the tablet after Google Android 3.0 is available, which means we probably won’t see the Eee Pad EP101 until the first quarter of 2011 although it’s likely we’ll see the little guy show up at CES in January. You know, a year after we first spotted an Asus tablet prototype at the CES 2010 trade show.
Next is yet another Eee Pad due around January, one that will run Windows Embedded Compact 7 on a 10-inch screen and at a price somewhere south of $499. Finally, there’s the grayscale Eee Tablet e-reader thing, formerly rumored to be under $599 but now priced at a solid $300 and, supposedly, shipping in October. Surely we’re mere months away from tablet saturation at this point.
Resources :engadget.com,channel.hexus.net,liliputing.com
Asus has made its move into the tablet market, showing off a selection of devices at the recent CES in Las Vegas.
The Eee Pad MeMO provides the ultimate in mobile flexibility. It’s 7. 1″ capacitive touch-screen makes it compact enough to slide into a jacket pocket, yet nonetheless great for carrying handwritten notes with the supplied stylus pen.