14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been skirting the issue for a while, but it finally came out and said beyond any doubt that it intends to launch a tablet device of its own.
In fact, it doesn't just want to make and sell a tablet, it wants to do it fast, reasonably anyway.
When asked by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sea, chairman Eric Schmidt stated as much.
Not many actual hardware or software details were provided of course, but the man did say enough to suggest that the ultimate goal is to give Apple's iPad a hard time, at the very least.
The Google Nexus moniker will be used as the brand, unless the company chooses a different company to build it (as was the case with Motorola's XOOM).
Then again, seeing as how Google is in the process of buying Motorola, it could just have it make the Google Nexus and still market it as its own.
Either way, there should be a Google tablet out and about in about six months.
“In the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality” said Schmidt.
If one were to speculate on the hardware, the Tegra 3 would be out first guess as a physical platform.
After all, it is experiencing a great success as part of the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime already and reviewers found the 'five-core' to be very capable.
As for the software, Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is the best candidate as the operating system.
There is one piece of info that the Google chairman provided: the tablet, whatever hardware it turns out to be made of, will feature its voice recognition technology.
Now we just have to wait and see if HP, or someone else, “pulls another TouchPad,” so to speak, and ends up overshadowing Android by basically dying.