14 DAY TRIAL // ASUS's Eee Pad Transformer will soon stop being the only Tegra 3 tablet, since Lenovo and Acer both mean to launch products of that sort as soon as possible.
Of course, that ASUS would not be the only company with Tegra 3 devices on sale for long was obvious.
The opposite would imply that the ARM-based quad-core (really five-core) platform was just that bad that it barely scored one design win.
According to Digitimes, a news and rumor site that, as the job entails, sometimes is right and sometimes isn't, both Lenovo and Acer would release rival slates by the end of the first quarter of 2012.
In other words, they will launch their items by the end of March, albeit probably sooner than that, what with CES 2012 approaching.
The two will most probably at least show off their inventions at the January convention.
ASUS has yet to actually start shipping its own product, even though Transformer Prime has been the talk of the web.
Most recently, online pre-order listings suggested it will come striding forth in its formal wear on December 8 though.
Its price is of $499 (479 Euro in Europe, probably) or $599, depending on flash storage, and is the same one that Lenovo and Acer will (probably) choose as well.
In other words, marketing and design will, in the end, decide which of them acquires the largest market share (ASUS might win because of its head start).
After all, since they all will boast NVIDIA's Kal-El, there won't be too much variation in performance.
NVIDIA definitely outdid itself with the Tegra 3, but there is one problem that 10.1-inch models powered by it will face: popularity.
While their capabilities cannot be denied, it is even more doubtless that their prices are leagues above that of the Amazon Kindle Fire which, though smaller (7-inch) and not as strong, has been smashing through sales figures again and again.