It seems like every other day we have a new Android tablet to write-up or review. The world looks to be flooded with Android tablets of every size and shape in the coming months. Even with the recent release of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, NVIDIA will tell you Google is “a little behind” Apple in the tablet market.
“Now it’s going to take something absolutely great to compete against the iPad and the iPhone, as we all know,” NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said. “Because both of those devices are quite amazing devices. And so it’s going to take something that is truly remarkable to compete against it. I think Andy [Rubin] and his team, and all of our engineers here working with them, and all of our partners around the world working on it, are going to absolutely deliver.”
This statement, coupled with Google saying that Android 2.2 is not optimized for tablets makes me wonder if manufacturers are jumping the gun a little bit. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) is set on the launching pad, but we still don’t know if this will be totally tablet friendly either. We may not see Android completely optimized for tablets until 3.0 (Honeycomb) rolls out.
The NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset is set to come out next year, with a ton of phones and tablets already in line to take advantage of its Dual-core goodness. I see this as an attempt by NVIDIA to “stir the pot” and get some buzz going about their company before the release.
I can see where they are coming from with the tablet statement, but did anyone else see the fact that Jen-Hsun Huang said Android doesn’t have a phone to compete with the iPhone? This I don’t believe to be true at all. Sales numbers alone show that Google can MORE then compete with iPhone. With devices like the Nexus One, Droid X, MyTouch 4G and Galaxy S line, rocking many options not even found on an iPhone 4, I don’t even see Apple as an option. Let’s not even get into open source or the Android community in this article. I believe that if you take any one of the afore-mentioned Android devices and an iPhone home with you, Android would be your daily driver in less than a week. Think I’m wrong, got something to add, anyone else think the jab at Android phones is a little much? Please, drop a comment below, I will be checking in often.