Sony has been praised for its water-resistant smartphones and tablets lately, so it probably didn’t take them long to imagine selling a tablet that’s addressed at all the chefs or people who like cooking out there. That’s how the Xperia Z: Kitchen Edition appeared, which is being launched today.
The tablet will cost $650 and will come with 32GB storage. It will also bring a few extra features that should help with cooking. It will come with a book-style stand, pre-loaded recipes from “Saveur” magazine and an iGrill digital wireless meat thermometer.
This device may seem strange coming from Sony, but I think Sony identified a market that could be better served than with a tablet “for the masses”. Granted, this tablet doesn’t offer a whole lot of other stuff on its own, than already existed (the recipe apps in the Play Store), which is probably why they’re adding all this extra hardware that makes more sense in the kitchen (for a higher price, too).
But I could envision Sony going the extra mile with version 2.0 of the Xperia Z: Kitchen Edition, and making a tablet that’s really cooking focused, from all the apps that could help with cooking being put front and center, to even using a custom UI with larger touch targets, to make it more optimized for the kitchen environment.
This is just one of the potential niche markets out there that could be in need of a specialized Android tablet, and if Sony is not very successful in the “mass-market”, but is successful with the chef market, then they might start designing more types of tablets, and sell them for higher prices (since they are specialized, and need more custom development work).
Hopefully, though, we’ll see an Xperia Z2 tablet (or will it be Xperia Z1?) soon, too, because the Xperia Z tablet was quite competitive when it launched early this year, and it showed other OEM’s that they can make much thinner and higher quality tablets, even if they aren’t made of metal.