14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that, even though rumors often turn out to be false alarms, the one in regards to Lenovo preparing two new Android tablets has turned out to be true, now that the company itself has officially announced them.
The number of tablets powered by Intel or ARM hardware and running a version of Google's Android operating system is steadily rising.
The HP TouchPad and the Toshiba Thrive tablets are just some of the latest models to be formally announced (or put up for pre-order).
Now, it seems that Lenovo is getting ready to unveil two tablets of its own, both of which have a display size of 10 inches (in diagonal).
The IdeaPad will be the consumer-oriented one and will start selling next month (July, 2011), while the ThinkPad will be intended for the enterprise market and will arrive about one or two months later.
Unfortunately, besides the size and operating system (Android 3.0 Honeycomb, unless Lenovo goes for 3.1), nothing is known of the specs.
“We’ve really been working to tailor the experience of our tablets,” said Lenovo President and Chief Operating Officer Rory Read told Dow Jones.
“Some of the early-generation Android devices were a little ahead of their time, and what we’re doing here is making sure [our tablets] are strong. We only have one opportunity to make that first good impression.”
Lenovo also spoke of the prospects for the smartphone market and the PC segment, saying that the former is a bit crowded right now but the latter will keep expanding, even if netbooks are “pretty much over.”
"From the standpoint of smartphones, that's a very crowded space," said Read. "The PC business is going to continue to expand and continue to grow, and especially in emerging markets it could grow very rapidly. In the client space... they're going to continue to expand significantly over the next decade. There's no doubt about it."