NEW YORK –
New tablets from
Coby, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Samsung
and Pandigital will try to chip
away at Apple’s enormous share of
the tablet market and compete with
the Amazon’s planned $199 Kindle
Fire tablet.
A total of 79.2 percent of tablet
owners use an iPad or iPad 2, a recent
survey by IHS iSuppli shows.
Amazon’s tablet is due in stores on
Nov. 15.
Here’s what the companies announced:
Coby
is expanding its selection
of Kyros tablets with a new resistive-
touchscreen tablet and its first
three tablets with capacitive multitouch
touchscreens. All feature
Android 2.3 OS.
The new resistive touchscreen
tablet is the 7-inch MID7012,
which will be the company’s
new opening-price model. It will
be in stores this month at a price
that wasn’t available. It will be
followed in time for the holidays
by three new capacitive-touch
models. Those are the 7-inch
MID7127, 8-inch MID8127 and
10.1-inch MID1126. Pricing
wasn’t available.
Coby entered the tablets market
early this year.
Pandigital
, in releasing its
$229-suggested SuperNova
flagship tablet, is expanding its
tablet selection. The Wi-Fi SuperNova
features a 8-inch color
touchscreen, 4GB of internal storage,
512MB of DRAM, 23GB SD
card slot and a 1GHz Cortex A8
processor. It runs on the Android
2.3 but will be able to handle an
upgrade to the Android Ice Cream
Sandwich OS.
Early in the year, the company
provided a firmware update to turn
its 7-inch Pandigital Novel line of
color-screen products into combination
Android tablets/e-readers.
Then in August, the company released
its first three Android-based
Nova tablets at prices ranging from
a suggested $159 to $189.
Samsung
unveiled in Korea
the successor to its 7-inch
Galaxy Tab. The Galaxy Tab 7.0
Plus will join the company’s Tab
8.9 and 10.1 models, unveiled in
March with 8.9-inch and 10.1-
inch touchscreens, respectively,
and Honeycomb OS.
With the new version, the
7-inch Tab steps up processing
power to a dual-core 1.2GHz
processor from a single-core
1GHz processor, adds Honeycomb
3.2 tablet OS in lieu of the
Android 2.2 (Froyo) smartphone OS, reduces weight to 12.2 ounces from 13.23 to 13.58
ounces depending on the carrier network, and reduces
depth to 0.39 inches from 0.47 inches. At 0.39 inches,
the 7.0 Plus is slightly thicker than the 0.34-inch depths
of the Tab 8.9 and 10.1.
In addition, the 7.0 Plus adds multiple Wi-Fi upgrades,
including the addition of Wi-Fi 802.11a to its
predecessor’s 802.11b/g/n, the addition of Wi-Fi Direct,
and the addition of Wi-Fi channel bonding, which
accelerates Wi-Fi speed.
The tablet will be available with either 16GB or 32GB
of embedded memory with 64GB MicroSD card slot.
T-Mobile
’s latest two tablets — the Samsung Galaxy
Tab 10.1 and Huawei-made 7-inch T-Mobile Spring-
Board with Google — will bring the carrier’s selection
of tablets with both Android Honeycomb OS and
14.4Mbps HSPA+ 4G cellular technology to three.
They’ll join the LG-made 4G-equipped 8.9-inch T-Mobile
G Slate with Google and replace two Android tablets
that did not use Honeycomb.
With the launches, T-Mobile will offer a 4G tablet in
each of three sizes: 7, 8.9 and 10.1 inches. The new
T-Mobile models, both with Android 3.2 OS, will be
available in time for holiday sales at prices that weren’t
announced.
Compared to the current 32GB G Slate, the two new
T-Mobile tablets add a mobile hot spot, tethering to a
laptop, T-Mobile TV streaming service, and mobile Wi-
Fi hot spot.
The SpringBoard features Qualcomm 1.2GHz dualcore
mobile processor, 720p video capture, HDMI
output, and 217-ppi display, according to the carrier’s
website and spec sheets provided to TWICE.
For its network, T-Mobile is also adding the 16GB
version of Samsung’s 4G-capable Samsung Galaxy
Tab 10.1, which is already available in 16GB and 32GB
4G LTE versions from Verizon. It’s thinner than the iPad
2, at 0.33 inches.
U.S. Cellular
expanded to its tablet selection to
three with the 7-inch HTC Flyer, which operates on
slower CDMA 1x EV-DO cellular-data technology and
uses the Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) operating system.
It retails for $399 with purchase of a 5GB data plan.
The price goes to $599 after s $100 mail-in rebate and
purchase of a 200MB data plan. The Flyer features
1.5GHz Qualcomm processor, 32 GB of internal memory,
and 32GB microSD card slot.
Vizio
added the Netflix video-streaming service to
its 8-inch tablet following the August launch of the Hulu
Plus video-streaming service on the device.
