Toshiba eyes bite from Apple
TOSHIBA is making its foray into the tablet war, offering a 10-inch device it says will be comparable in price to Apple’s iPad.
The Toshiba Tablet, which will be available in the first half of 2011 and run Google’s forthcoming Honeycomb version of the Android operating system, is targeted at consumers.
Like other touchscreen tablets, it plays high-definition videos and is designed for web browsing, games and electronic books.
The tablet, which uses Nvidia’s Tegra 2 mobile processor, connects to the internet over wi-fi, but has no built-in capability to connect to high-speed mobile phone networks. It features front and rear-facing cameras, and will have access to an applications store.
Toshiba’s tablet will be competitively priced versus the iPad, which starts at $499, although the company declined to be more specific.
Jeff Barney, general manager of digital products for Toshiba America, made it clear that the tablet is only the company’s first.
“We are going to embrace this category, and we are looking to develop a family of tablets,” he said.
Toshiba will show off the tablet this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, an annual trade show held in Las Vegas.
With roughly five per cent of the global PC market, Toshiba is one of a host of companies attempting to steal a piece of the emerging tablet market from Apple.