As CES 2011 continues, filled with dozens upon dozens of Android tablets, Google decides to at last grant everyone a sneak peek of “Honeycomb,” the tablet-friendly version of its mobile operating system Android due to launch sometime this year. As previously rumored, Honeycomb will be tablet-only, and not available for Android smartphones. It introduces a new user interface, better multi-tasking, unique homescreen customizations and more, says Google.
But iPad dominates the tablet market at present, and analysts predict that will continue to be the case, even though Android phones outsell iPhones (a fact confirmed this week by tech tracking firm comScore.)
So we’ll ask you, ReadWriteMobile users shopping for a tablet, are you planning on buying an iPad or one of the new Android tablets? Let us know in this week’s poll.
Honeycomb Details Revealed
According to a post on Google’s Mobile Blog, Android’s VP Engineering Andy Rubin offered a preview of Honeycomb 3.0, saying it has been “designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets.”
Honeycomb also features a new holographic user interface, refined multi-tasking and notifications, a home screen customization with 3D effects, redesigned, richer and more interactive widgets and, of course, access to “over 100,000 applications” in the Android Market, said Rubin. (That number is notable, by the way, since third-party Android tracking site AndroLib.com recently revealed the Market has reached 200,00 apps. Are only half of those tablet-ready?)
And like Android smartphones, Honeycomb provides access to other Google services like Gmail, Maps, Google eBooks, Google Talk (with video!) and more.
Google shared a video of Honeycomb, too, a sort of sneak-peek into what’s to come:
iPad Still Dominates
But iPad is the market leader in tablets by a wide margin. As Louis Gray noted today in his op-ed “There are No iPad Killers, Only iPad Alternatives,” analysts expect iPad to sell anywhere from 30-65 million units this year. Forrester, for example, recently pegged the number at 24.1 million units in the U.S. market alone for 2011. And by 2015, it says tablets will reach 82 million U.S. consumers, and, “not all of them will be iPads.”
So what will your tablet choice be, assuming you haven’t bought one already? Will it be an iPad or something else?
And yes, we realize there are other competitors out there (like BlackBerry’s PlayBook for instance, or Windows 7), but let’s keep this poll simple for a change – an iPad or Android tablet? We’ll provide “Other” and “N/A” for those of you who still want to weigh in otherwise.
Let us know in the comments, if you’d like, which tablet model you will choose.
