With RIM and HP planning to release tablet devices in the coming months, the tablet market is heating up in a serious way. And no, I'm not talking about how 100+ tablet devices from a slew of companies are poised to hit store shelves in 2011. Rather, with upcoming offerings from some of the biggest players in tech on the horizon coupled with the proliferation of Android tablets, Apple's iPad will be facing its stiffest competition yet in 2011.
With RIM and HP planning to release tablet devices in the coming months, the tablet market is heating up in a serious way. And no, I’m not talking about how 100+ tablet devices from a slew of companies are poised to hit store shelves in 2011. Rather, with upcoming offerings from some of the biggest players in tech on the horizon coupled with the proliferation of Android tablets, Apple’s iPad will be facing its stiffest competition yet in 2011.
The good news is that Apple is doing anything but staying stagnant. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has already begun manufacturing the iPad 2, Apple’s next-gen tablet that has been at the root of a number of intriguing and conflicting rumors. While notions of an iPad 2 with a Retina Display and/or an SD Card slot appear to have fallen by the wayside, users can expect a slimmer form factor on account of a thinner display, a front-facing video camera, and a slightly lighter device. Toss in more memory and a powerful graphics processor and the iPad 2 may very well leave competitors in the dust as they’ll inevitably release tablets that compete with last year’s iPad. Indeed, the recently unveiled HP TouchPad seems to be an exact replica of the current iPad in may respects. The upcoming, iPad, however, will be sporting a lot more horsepower under the hood with, rumor has it, more RAM (512MB to be precise), an ARM Cortex-A9 dual core processor running at 1.2 GHZ, and last but not least, an Imagination SGX543 dual core GPU that puts the iPhone 4 to shame. Toss in reports that Apple may debut the A5 chip in the iPad 2 and we’re talking a pretty serious upgrade here.
Rumor wise, the iPad 2 continues to bring the heat. The latest rumor suggests that the next-gen iPad will incorporate NFC chips and will forgo an aluminum build in favor of carbon fiber. Some lofty ideas that should obviously be taken with a grain of salt.
Apple released the original iPad in early April of last year and unsubstantiated reports suggest that the iPad 2 will be released in late March or early April. In light of that, reports of an iPad media event have been making the rounds lately, with the latest tidbit being that Apple may hold an iPad special event at the end of February ahead of a launch a few weeks later.
