computer tablet

According to the stats from the research firm Social Nuggets people use their computer tablets mostly for business purposes. Thus, business activity on Apple iPads and BlackBerry PlayBooks accounts for over 25%.

Meantime, owners of Android based tablets use them for business only at 20% rate. Shopping accounted for 23% of the activity on Android tablets while games accounted for 17.5% on iPads.

Social Nuggets gets the information from scanning both official reviews and comments in forums to see what people think of different tablets and what they use them for.

New rumors appear in the media sources that Apple is developing the next generation iPad along with the speculations on the iPhone 5. Bloomberg reported: “Apple is also testing a new version of the iPad that has a higher resolution screen, similar to the one now used in the iPhone 4, one of the people [familiar with the plans] said.”

Then Bloomberg adds: “The screen resolution on Apple’s new iPad would be about one-third higher than that of the iPad 2 and will boast a more responsive touchscreen, one of the people said.”

Huawei Technologies announced its 7-inch Android-based tablet PC in Singapore on Monday and said it has plans to launch a 10 inch device to compete with Apple and Samsung.

The chief marketing officer of Huawei unit Huawei Device Victor Xu said the company plans to be among the top five handset vendors in three years time, a market currently dominated by the likes of Nokia, Samsung and Apple.

South Korean company Samsung Electronics filed its own lawsuit against Apple accusing the Cupertino giant of infringing 10 patents. Earlier Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung claiming the Samsung's Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copies the iPhone and iPad.

Being one of the most rapidly growing smartphone makers Samsung poses a fierce competition for Apple in the tablet market. Galaxy series tablets produced by Samsung are built on Google's Android operating system, which directly competes with Apple's mobile software.

New documents in the PowerPoint format leaked the Internet and revealed some facts about a new super-slim Android 3.0 tablet to be announced by Lenovo soon. The tablet targets enterprise market and has a number of links and apps that will allow it to connect to existing enterprise directories, and management and security applications.

In a separate PDF file it was also revealed that Lenovo is preparing a new notebook series. According to the PDF, the notebooks' battery will run three times longer and charge 2.5 times faster compared to those in Lenovo's existing ThinkPad line.

Samsung Electronics is sued by Apple Inc on allegations that the Korean company violated Apple’s patents and that its Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copies the iPhone and iPad.

Samsung emerged as the strongest competitor to Apple unlike other rivals who produce tablets too. Samsung’s Galaxy products are built on Google Android OS but Apple’s lawsuit targets Galaxy's design features.

John Jackson, an analyst with CCS Insight, said Samsung is essentially Apple's only real tablet competitor at this stage.

According to the data from research firm Strategy Analytics the global tablet computer market is set to grow to a $49 billion business by 2015.

The tablet computer market will become the third largest consumer electronics sector, after televisions and personal computers, the research firm said, forecasting 149 million units will be sold in 2015, growing eightfold from 2010.

"Tablets are a high-value casual-computing segment that is creating huge growth opportunities for major brands, such as Apple and Samsung," said analyst Neil Mawston.
 

eBay reported that resellers are making fortunes on listing Apple’s iPad 2 on the auction site because they set the selling prices as high as 53% above retail.

The company released stats this week that show the average selling price of a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 since its launch three weeks ago has been $697, $198 over Apple's retail price. That represents a profit of 40%.

Meantime, the average auction price of the 64GB Wi-Fi model has reached $963, or 53% above retail, while the 64GB Wi-Fi/3G iPad 2 averaged $1,235, 49% higher than the list price of $829.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the next generation iPad yesterday morning. The new tablet is simply called iPad 2 which is, as noted by Jobs, an all-new design “not tweaked”.

Thus, new features include among other things a new dual-core processor that Apple calls the A5 and up to nine-times faster graphics. Besides, it has two video cameras, one in the front and one in the rear, as does the iPhone 4.

HTC made a presentation of its two social networking phones and introduced its first computer tablet. Besides, the Taiwanese smartphone maker also unveiled new versions of its hit models Desire, Wildfire and Incredible. All six devices run Google Android software.

"We believe customers want choice; one size does not fit all," said Philip Blair, product director at HTC Europe.

HTC positioned the tablet in the premium price category, but said its was ready to sell new social networking phones at keenly competitive price levels.

Research In Motion will allow its PlayBook tablets to run applications meant for Google Android operating system, according to the report made by Bloomberg. Thereby PlayBook users will be able to access a market of 130,000 Android applications.

Citing the sources familiar with the case Bloomberg reports that one analysts believes this development could make the PlayBook stand out against the many tablets expected to be released this year, as it will offer both security and a wide array of apps to choose from.

Some new details about the next generation iPad have been reported by the Wall Street Journal, who cited people with the knowledge of the matter. Meantime, Apple has made no announcement yet.

The report in the Journal says that the next iPad will be available through both AT&T and Verizon, and will be thinner, lighter, and will have at least one camera on the front. The new tablet will also feature more memory and a more powerful graphics processor.

HP demonstrated a new series of devices on webOS platform including a tiny smartphone Veer, business phone the Pre3 and its first Palm tablet HP TouchPad.

13mm thick HP TouchPad features an iPad-esque 9.7-inch capacitive multitouch display, 1.3-megapixel front-facing webcam, 1.2GHz ARM-based Qualcomm dual-core processor, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and stereo speakers. The tablet comes with 16GB and 32GB of storage. It can do video calling and is specifically designed for multitasking.

Dell Inc unveiled its new tablet device for business users that will run Microsoft Windows operating system. While many experts believe current version of Windows is not very good for tablet environment Dell says its commercial customers give preference to a familiar and secure architecture of Microsoft software.

Previously the computer maker launched its tablets on Google’s Android operating platform.

A screenshot of Nokia’s upcoming media tablet that runs MeeGo operating system appeared on the net. The picture of the slate device created with Intel was posted on the Mobile-Review forum.

The screenshot shows a tablet running a video player app and Nokia logo on the upper side. It looks like having a 7 inch screen.

The picture apparently came from the MeeGo website as it was found from the meta data.