New York — Pandigital released its flagship tablet PC, the
SuperNova.
The SuperNova will hit Best Buy on Oct. 10 with a $229
suggested retail price with other retailers coming online later this month.
The SuperNova came about as a direct result of Pandigital’s
customers requesting a full tablet experience, something more than the revved
up e-readers the company had been offering said, Jason Tofel, Pandigital’s VP
marketing and product development.
The Wi-Fi SuperNova has an 8-inch color touchscreen, 4GB of
internal storage, 512MB of DRAM, 23GB SD card slot and a 1GHz Cortex A8
processor.
The device is running on Android 2.3, but Tofel said it will
be able to handle an upgrade to the Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS when it
becomes available later this year. However, the company said an upgrade will
depend upon the new OS meeting Pandigital’s standards.
Pandigital said it was originally planning on using a new
version of Honeycomb for the SuperNova, but that OS never appeared as Google
focused its efforts on Ice Cream Sandwich and because this the device does not
have access to the Android App Store. Instead Pandigital has placed a link to
the GetJar app store.
Tofel believes the SuperNova is well-positioned to compete
in the tablet market this holiday season despite the competition from Apple and
the new Kindle.
“Not everyone can afford an Apple,” he said, adding
Pandigital has experience selling its own e-reader products against Amazon’s
Kindle.
Tofel thought Amazon’s presence in the tablet market will be
helpful as the online retailer will bring its marketing muscle to bear and hype
the category.
