14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that the tablet market has grown quickly enough that more and more companies find it hard to resist the urge to create a slate of their own, with TazTag having now announced that it plans to show off one at the upcoming trade show.
End-users keeping track of such things will no doubt know that the 2011 edition of the Mobile World Congress was packed full of tablets.
Many notebook makers and smartphone developers, among others, combined the ARM CPU platform with the Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system.
The various tablets had screen sizes of 7 to 10.1 inches, some even more, while prices varied, some set at $500 while others went as high as $800.
Of course, since the slate segment is just now gaining traction, it makes sense that other IT companies would want to grab a slice of it now and grow along with the market itself.
That said, it would appear that French company TazTag, which specializes in so-called contactless technologies, has a slate of its own on the way.
The product is a 7-inch model described as the world's first NFC ANDROID tablet and will be aimed at professional applications instead of the average consumer.
It is granted security by a biometric authentication option and, with or without this feature, can be used at aisle end displays or store windows, among other things.
The TazPad, as it is called, is essentially meant to link the back end system with the vendor and customers.
That said, among its hardware assets are WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC and ZigBee, plus a Full HD and HDMI output, a GPS device and a camera, plus an accelerometer.
As already mentioned, the TazPad will show up during the CeBIT 2011 international expo in Hannover, Germany. An actual demonstration will take place on March 2, the second day of the event.