I keep thinking that some company is going to release a 7″ tablet that’s nicely done and a big hit, proving that there’s a market for a device that’s a lot bigger than a smartphone but a lot smaller than an iPad. So far it hasn’t happened. But the 7″ tablets keep coming, and today Toshiba gave me a peek at the Thrive 7″ Tablet, which it plans to release in December.
Enough with the pretense–Amazon.com is unveiling its Android tablet tomorrow. (I’d like to see a new Kindle e-reader, too, OK?) I’ll be at the New York event and will liveblog it starting at 10am ET. I’ll also have a special guest: Jason Snell of Macworld, who will provide color commentary and generally hang out with us.
It may not surprise you to learn that Apple events get by far the highest liveblog attendance here at Technologizer. (Google Android events and Facebook ones are more or less tied for a distant second place.) I’ve never liveblogged an Amazon press conference, so I’m looking forward to it–and wondering whether, as with Apple events, tens of thousands of you will choose to join me.
Gdgt’s Ryan Block is reporting an interesting bit of scuttlebutt which I’ve also heard: that Amazon’s upcoming Android tablet is based on the same hardware platform as RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook:
From there, Amazon’s team determined they could build a tablet without the help and experience of Lab 126, so they turned to Quanta, which helped them “shortcut” the development process by using the PlayBook as their hardware template. Of course, it’s never quite that simple, and as I’m told Amazon ran into trouble, and eventually sacrifices were made (like using a slower processor).
Hardware’s important, of course, but it’s not the only thing. As with Kindle e-readers, it’s the Amazon services that are going to be key in making the tablet stand out from other products that look similar.
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler has some related scuttlebutt: the Amazon tablet will be called the Kindle Fire, won’t be available until November, and will compete against a Barnes & Noble Nook Color 2 that’s also in the works for the holidays.
Oh, and Siegler says that Wednedsday’s Amazon event in New York will definitely include the tablet announcement. Which is good news, since I’m flying cross country to liveblog it. Join me at technologizer.com/amazon at 10am ET on Wednesday, won’t you?
On Wednesday, September 28th at 10am ET, Amazon.com is holding a press event in New York City. The odds seem good that it’ll announce an Android-based tablet there. So I’m making the hike to the east coast to attend, and will liveblog the event at technologizer.com/amazon. For the moment, at least, Amazon feels like the company most likely to release something that can truly rival the iPad, so I can’t wait to know more…
Over at my new Challengers blog on Cnet, I took a look at the present and future of the four major platforms that aim to rival iOS as seen on the iPad: Android, WebOS, QNX, and Windows. I like competition, but so far, there hasn’t been a whole lot of good news for anyone except Apple.
Sigh. HP, having ended development of WebOS tablets and phones, no longer needs the people who created them, reports All Things Digital’s John Paczkowski:
Sources close to HP say the company plans to lay off as many as 525 employees, and that it began carrying out that dreadful duty this week.
RIM’s PlayBook isn’t selling well–which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s used one. So the price is coming down. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve anything: the problem with the PlayBook is that it’s broken, not that it’s too expensive.
RIM says it’s going to fix the most glaring issue–the lack of built-in e-mail–and with any luck, it’ll have more to say at its developer conference next month, which I’ll be attending. I hope it doesn’t do an HP and kill the product. For everything that’s so very wrong about the PlayBook, its problems are ones of execution–and I still think that it’s possible to build a great mobile platform using the PlayBook’s QNX operating system.
It sounds like prototypes (yes, plural) of Apple’s iPad 3 may be floating around the “supply chain” already, but don’t look for the next-gen tablet this year, because…why, right? If you were sitting on 68.3% of the tablet market (according to the latest 2Q 2011 IDC report) and your nearest competitor (that would be Google’s Android) fell from 34% to 26.8% market share during the same period, where’s the fire?
That’s J.P. morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz’s reasoning, anyway. He’s just told Apple Insider that—not really a surprise here—his “conversations with industry insiders” indicate Apple’s third-generation iPad won’t arrive until sometime, 2012.
Today’s formal unveiling of the Windows 8 developers preview at Microsoft’s BUILD conference in Anaheim revealed a boatload of information about the upcoming OS, which will introduce so many innovations that attendees and journalists are still trying to formulate (and assess) a coherent big picture.
Whether Fusion Garage’s Grid 10 tablet is going to be any good remains to be seen. (When I saw it last month, it still felt like a very rough draft.) But it will be cheap when it ships in October: The price has already tumbled from $499 to $299.
