It's going to be a few months before the iPad 3 arrives and in the run-up to the launch, the competition from Android tablets is beginning to look a little more challenging. For those of us hoping for a healthy market in fondleslabs, this is a good sign. To be honest, Apple's dominance of the tablet market over the past 18 months has seemed a little too easy.
But some of the new market entrants are now beginning to offer valuable unique selling points that have been lacking hitherto.
The main challengers are listed below with their selling strengths...
(But to be honest, there is also still a little bad news.)
Stylus - the digital type, not one of the older press-harder models
Can be used as phone,
Handbag-friendly - will even fit in a normal jacket pocket
Since it's so much larger than an iPhone and yet plenty smaller than an iPad, Apple will struggle to brand it a "slavish copy"
Asus Transformer Prime
Faster (4.5 processor cores on the new Kel Al chip)
Impressive keyboard dock
Likely to be first to get the new Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android (or second after Motorola's Xoom).
Lenovo Thinkpad
Big Business, the tablet. One tablet to rule them all. This comes with
all the connections
apps for the business user,
a stylus, and even a slot to slide the stylus into.
But maybe not quite right for the smaller handbag and certainly no chance of fitting any sort of jacket pocket. Business users may also be tempted by Motorola's Xoom 2 expected in "mid November", not to mention the Asus Tranformer Prime which has already been mentioned above.
Sony P and S
Playstation integration,
Also integrates with some TVs.
Nicer buying experience than other Android tablets. In other the shops shops and staff are nicer - even nicer than the Apple shops on a busy day!
Plus the option of a bigger hard disk for all your videos and holiday snaps.
And the Honeycomb platform,
And a kick-stand so that it can support itself on a table.
Cheaper
Cambridge Sciences G7 - brand less important than price, but it still has most of the qualifying features, including
the capacitive touchscreen.
Cheapest
The sad resistive touchscreen
NATPC Tabtech M009S / M010S. Basic functionality for all at well under £100. This time it has resistive screen which requires a little determination, but it does the job.
Let Battle Commence
Of all these, the biggest threat looks likely to come from Samsung's Galaxy Note which can be sold with a cellular contact and hence should attract the support of the mobile phone vendors.
A look at Amazon's best seller lists also shows the strength of the challenge from the budget options like NATPC's M009S and M010S.
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