BenQ 7-Inch Tablets Set for 2011 Release

As end-users know, quite a few tablets have been revealed over the past months, especially during MWC 2011, but more are coming, obviously, and BenQ seems poised to bring out one or more of its own.

The thing with tablets is that they turned out to be one of the most surprising products of the past few years, from a marketing standpoint that is.

At first, at the start of 2010, and even after the Apple iPad came out (and sold by the thousands, much to everyone's mild-to-serious shock), most laptop makers were skeptical and believed slates wouldn't evolve beyond a niche market.

Granted, not many of them exist so far, but many of those that have, up till now, launched have been selling quite well.

Now, makers of both mobile consumer electronics and notebooks are competing, having mostly adopted the ARM platform and the Android OS.

Of course, there is also the matter of Intel and its Oak Trail platform, which will supposedly prove to be a great challenge to ARM's low-power chips.

Regardless, the fact is that newer and better tablets will keep debuting, and BenQ is said to be planning on delivering a 7-inch one soon enough.

The company showed its first 10.1-inch R100 in February 15 and intends, according to a report, to bring out a 7-inch model sometime during the second quarter, meaning the April-June period.

There is no mention of the hardware, so there is no way to know for sure if the product will be ARM-based or built with an x86 CPU.

Either way, BenQ also means to deliver another 10.1-inch slate sometime after this one, likely equipped with 3G.

What remains to be seen is how large (or mall) a chunk of the worldwide tablet market these devices secure for BenQ (2011 is expected to see 50 million tablet PC shipments).