The iPad’s stranglehold on the tablet market may be nearing its end. Several new reports hint that Apple’s rivals are gearing up for a fight, and judging by the exhaustive list of combatants, things could get really interesting really fast.
First comes news that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is promising a deluge of Windows 7 slates from the likes of Dell, Toshiba, Samsung and Asus, among others. Also, eagle-eyed Engadget spotted HP’s logo floating in the sea of Windows 7 slate partners on the WPC 2010 homepage. Does it mean that the HP Slate is not quite dead yet, or did someone just forget to update a graphic?
Another potential entrant worth watching — in the non-Windows tablet space, however — is Research in Motion, whose home court advantage in the business realm may thwart Apple’s ambitions for the iPad in the enterprise. According to some insider buzz, the corporate handset maker is gearing up for a BlackBerry tablet that features a 1 GHz processor from Marvell, dual cameras (hello video conferencing) and a 7-inch touchscreen.
Like I said, interesting…
Image credit: HP
