By Michael Martin
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-05-07
Apple possesses a power that few other companies can claim: the ability to create markets. The iPhone has been a massive success, and the iPad appears to be headed in that direction, because Apple created something that people not only wanted, but obsessed over.
Other companies, seeing the hysteria over Apple's products, went to work trying to devise competitors. Hence, a market is created. Apple didn't lay all the ground work. Rather, companies like Nokia and Lenovo created excellent foundations upon which Apple could build. Google has taken a similar track, though they've been a bit later than Apple to the party.
We can probably get used to seeing this image in many, many news articles, commentary columns, and blog posts over the next six or seven months. It's the stock image to represent an Android tablet device. When Apple released the iPhone rumors immediately started swirling of a gPhone. It's only natural, then, that we hear rumors about an Android tablet not long after the iPad's release. Piggyback or not, I'm sure that, like Android to the iPhone, Google could find a way to create a success of a potential tablet device.
While the murmurs of an Android tablet were inevitable once Apple announced the iPad, this seems to come from quite a serious source. As The New York Times reports, Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke of the device himself, noting how the company wanted to stay under the radar during the device's development. It would function primarily as an e-reader - Schmidt reportedly mentioned that Google has talked to publishers about delivery systems - but would also "function like a computer." It seems like the hybrid balance that tablet manufactured, both current and potential, seek.
Even if the Google tablet device does hit shelves in 2010, it won't be the first Android-powered tablet. We've already seen the two Archos tablets. In addition, we've heard that HP will release a smaller tablet powered by Android, and that Dell could have an Android tablet in the offing. Still, we saw a number of Android devices, but it appears that the one Google calls its own, the Nexus One, runs ahead of the pack. The same could be true of a potential Android tablet.
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