Tablets go to war in Las Vegas

Between the Thursday and Sunday last week, innovators and industry leaders took to the battle at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and it was the tablets that were making the headlines.

It has been estimated there were over 100 tablet computers on display at the annual gadget show.  Google boasted a number of devices powered by their Android operating system at the show, one of which has caused quite a stir.

Apple has sold 7.5m iPad’s since its release, marking Apple, quite clearly, as the one to beat.  However, Motorola's XOOM has been hailed by a number of bloggers and reviewers as a possible iPad killer, even though the Android 3.0 software which it will run on is not finalized yet. 

Motorola was only able to show a prototype of XOOM, with a final version ready to ship in the US in the next couple of months. There is no official advice as to when it will be available for sale in Europe at this stage or more importantly, the price of the device.

In order to wet your whistle though, it has a 10.1 capacitive screen with the ability to show full HD video playback. It will also feature the expected features like accelerometer, gyroscope and Adobe Flash and there will be a rear and a front facing camera for making video calls.

Of course it wouldn’t be much of a battle unless, in response to the gauntlet being laid, there was speculation from the other team about a soon to be released upgrade or better still the mouth watering prospect of a release from HP that will really throw the cat among the pigeons.  In other words, watch this space; the battle of the tablets is just heating up.