There’ve been rumors floating around for a while that cellphone maker HTC was planning on building a new tablet to rival Apple’s iPad. But Pocket Lint spoke with HTC spokesperson Eric Lin, who says that while the company is looking at the possibility, there are currently no plans to build an HTC tablet.
That doesn’t mean we won’t eventually see a tablet from the company. But as many Liliputing readers may know, dozens of companies in Taiwan and mainland China have been pumping out Google Android powered tablets for months… and Lin says HTC isn’t interested in putting out just another machine that looks like all the rest. Instead HTC will likely watch the space before deciding whether there’s a way to develop something that will stand out from the crowd.
Of course, HTC, Motorola, and other smartphone makers seem to be hell-bent on putting larger and larger displays into phones. So while HTC isn’t planning on launching an iPad-sized tablet this year, you could kind of argue that the company has already pumped out several tablets — which just happen to make phone calls as well. I mean seriously, have you seen the size of the HTC Evo or the HTC Touch HD2?
I hope when they say, “Watch the space” they mean have their elves in R&D furiously mocking up working models of what is possible as fast as well can. If HTC wants into the market before it is too late they should have been working on prototypes.
The iPad being announced on January 27, 2010 by Steve Jobs at an Apple press conference at in San Francisco SHOULD have been the ‘starting gun’ for HTC and everyone else. If Apple says it is possible then the next day they ALL needed to figure out how.
It seems like everyone sat on their thumbs playing wait-n-see. With millions of iPads selling it still seems like nobody cares because companies like HTC are saying “Oh we’ll wait”. That’s what happened with netbooks in the US. The west said, “Ha! Nobody will buy that crap…we tried” and then in 2009 they said, “Crap! Everyone is buying them.” It seems like they said, “Ha! Good luck Apple…nobody will buy that crap” and now they are shocked into inactivity.
At this rate it could take years to wrestle away market share in this sector from Apple. Years that Apple will use to grab exclusive deals for content and place as much software support, movies, music, and images behind their garden wall.