Lenovo LePad, another Android tablet pushed back
Continuing a recent and deeply disappointing trend among tablet vendors, yet another Android-based tablet that was announced with much fanfare months ago has been pushed back into 2011, and even that release date is up in the air.
Chinese tech giant Lenovo announced today that its entry into the supposedly crowded Android tablet market, somewhat absurdly named LePad (the company says “Le” means “Happy” in Chinese, but still the name just begs for a cheesy French accent), won’t be coming out in the US this December as they promised in the fall. Instead they are saying summer of 2011, maybe, depending on Google’s milestones, sort of.
The excuse that Lenovo is using should sound familiar at this point. They are mouthing Google’s now infamous statement about Froyo being wrong for tablets, stating that they will wait until at least Android 3.5, Honeycomb. Honeycomb is reputed to be optimized for tablets though in what ways no one knows as of yet. Google is also rumored to already be working on Android 4, codenamed Ice Cream, so if Lenovo needs it they have plenty of excuse fodder right up until 2012, courtesy of Google.
Of the supposed flood of Android tablets due to be released in the West this year, so far the Samsung Galaxy Tab is the only one to come from a major vendor and due to its price is likely poor competition indeed for Apple’s iPad. In fact it is looking more and more likely that the iPad will have no serious competition this holiday season, which means at this stage I would expect many of these tablets being delayed into 2011 to be canceled soon after the new year starts.
[PC Mag | Engadget]
