14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that, while ASRock may be leaving a certain market segment behind, it may just enter another, the tablet market that is, meaning that it will have an entirely new competition to enlist for.
Not long ago, ASRock was revealed to have become the world's third largest supplier of motherboards.
No sooner had that happened that a certain report emerged, saying that the very same company may be exiting the notebook market entirely.
Now, the same company has become the subject of yet another rumor published by Digitimes, this once dealing with the supposed plans for entering the tablet segment.
Aided by its parent company Pegatron Technology, the outfit has begun to plan, if not outright build, tablets with display sizes of 7 inches and 10 inches.
This is not unlike what other companies, such as ViewSonic, have been doing, as those two form factors seem to appeal to different consumer segments.
Regardless, ASRock's slates will supposedly utilize the NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC (system-on-chip).
For those that need a reminder, Tegra 2 is very widespread among tablets and features a pair of Cortex-A9 cores, clocked at 1 GHz each.
Thus, upcoming devices will be capable of multimedia playback in quality of up to 1,080p, among other things.
The other detail included in the report is that ASRock's tablets will be loaded with Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS (set to debut on February 2).
An exact time of arrival for the first batch of tablets has not been provided, but it should happen sometime during the second quarter.
Needless to say, the company will have to make sure its first batch of slates is noteworthy enough to make up for the 'delay' in joining this particular race. Either way, only time will tell whether ASRock can manage to have its slate endeavor emulate the success of its motherboard business.