By Carl Bagh: Subscribe to Carl's RSS feed
August 4, 2010 9:20 AM EDT
Motorola and Verizon joined hands to introduce a tablet PC focused on television-content, taking a plunge into the burgeoning tablet market set afire by iPad.
The tablet device will feature a 10-inch screen and will be based on Android operating system. The differentiating factor for the product would be access to Verizon's FiOS cable service. It will support Adobe Flash, a platform of choice for more than 90 percent of web videos.
There has been a buzzing rumor since the start of the year when it launched a prototype of Motorola tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Motorola has been successful in raking the smartphone market giving Apple iPhone stiff competition with the launch of its Droid X model. The model sold more than 350,000 units since it hit the market last month. Currently the smartphone is out of stock. It is also due to launch its Droid 2 and will follow-up with Android 2.2 or Froyo updates to Droid phones.
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With multiple tablets set to hit the market, Motorola's new tablet PC will surely contend with Apple's iPad, besides facing competition from other Google Android-based tablets like Dell Streak, HP Slate 500, Samsung Galaxy Tab, BlackBerry's BlackPad and Cisco's Cius.
Thus, Motorola's use of building a tablet around television content makes strategic sense just as Cisco built its Cius tablet around video-conferencing - to differentiate its product from other Android-based tablets.
Motorola's relationship with Verizon - which owns 25 percent of US television market - can be a defining move as customers will be able to access pay TV service directly from their device unlike Apple iPad, where one can access TV content through downloads provided by iTunes, Netflix and Hulu.
Before the launch of iPad, Apple was unable to convince TV programmers to reduce the price of TV shows or offer a package of hit shows to undercut the traditional subscription-based TV pay models. There were also talks about Apple introducing a cloud-based video service. There are reports doing rounds that Apple moved its Lala music team - which it purchased last year - to work on video streaming service due to be launched in 2010.
Hence, Motorola has a good chance to capitalize on the vacuum left by Apple in the TV content segment. With Kindle taking the e-book segment, Cisco focusing on video-conferencing, multiple iPad advantages and weaknesses provide room for other players to enter the tablet market.
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