Mobile World Congress 2012 has come and gone, and where CES 2012 was a letdown for Android device fans, MWC brought a lot of announcements of new devices headed to market soon.
There were lots and lots of new devices unveiled that covered the low end of the market, the very high end of the market and every spot in between. There were dual core devices, quad core devices and there was even a phone with a projector in the end of it.
But where were the quad core tablets?
We had Huawei lay claim to the world’s first quad core 10″ tablet at MWC called the MediaPad10 FHD. Huawei is a Chinese electronics manufacturer that isn’t exactly a household electronics name because they are better known for building gadgets for other companies, but it isn’t like they are new to snapping phones and tablets together.
ASUS, perhaps the most successful Android tablet manufacturer to date, announced their new Transformer Pad Infinity range of four tablets at MWC. They’re not all quad core devices, but if you can live with a WiFi only tablet there are two new models that will have quad core processors on board,
There was also ZTE, another Chinese electronics manufacturer that’s better known for contract manufacturing than their own branded devices. They announced a pair of quad core tablets at MWC this year, the 10″ ZTE PF 100 and the 7″ ZTE T83. I’m not going to be the first person to jump in line to buy a T83, but I won’t be last either.
Aside from ASUS and Chinese contract manufacturers that are looking to break out with their own branded devices, where were the other Android OEM’s? This was supposed to be the year of ICS and quad core devices wasn’t it?
Samsung announced a couple of tablets, one of which offered only minor bumps in specs over last year’s model. Neither includes a quad core processor. The 10″ Galaxy Note and the 10″ Galaxy Tab 2 will both be powered by a dual core chip.
How about HTC? While they did kill it with their new HTC One branded trio of phones, I’m fairly certain that the word tablet wasn’t even mentioned by HTC this year. Why not? Has HTC decided to cede the tablet space?
Where was Sony, you ask? Well, they showed up and, like HTC, they added the Xperia P and Xperia U to their previously announced Xperia S to create another trio of killer devices. But they are phones, not tablets. And not one of them is a quad core device.
How about Acer? How about no. Motorola, LG? Nope, neither one of them had anything to say about quad core tablets either.
For all of the great news that came out of Mobile World Congress this year, there was very little in the way of quad core tablet goodness. This year, it seems that the OEM’s that are better known as phone manufacturers chose to concentrate on their phone lineup, and those that are better known for their Android tablets will be the brands that you will be after if a quad core processor is a requirement for your next tablet.
For all of the great news that came out of Mobile World Congress this year, there was very little in the way of quad core tablet goodness. You can claim, and rightly so, that a quad core tablet seems like it’s a bit of overkill. Then again, Android OEM’s collectively decided to compete with other, much more successful companies by trying to out do them on specs first and price second.
There’s another great big tablet announcement coming in a few days. I wonder if they’ll talk about a quad core processor.