According to a Taiwanese news source, the world’s second biggest PC manufacturer may announce a 7-inch Android tablet alongside the announcement of its 10-inch Windows 7 tablet today.
Digitimes reports that today might be a big day for tablets. The 10-inch Windows tablet seems like a lock, but a smaller, Android tablet that would go head-to-head with the Samsung Galaxy Tab (which just announced 600,000 units sold in the first month of sales) may also be revealed:
Acer has two internal opinions about the debut of Android tablet PCs, one is to delay the debut until after Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and Honeycomb (Android 3.x) are launched, the other is that an early debut will help compete with Samsung Electronics’ and Toshiba’s Galaxy Tab and Folio 100, the sources pointed out…
Because the US is the main market for iPad, Acer’s selection of New York for the debut signals Acer’s challenge to Apple and bid to share the global market especially during the peak sales period prior to the year-end holidays, the sources pointed out.
In May, Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci (pictured above right) displayed a 7-inch Android tablet with a QWERTY keyboard, similar to Amazon’s Kindle design. It was rumored to include the speedy NvidiaTegra 2 processor. Delivery date? Q4 2010.
According to Digitimes, the tablet will run Android 2.2 Froyo even though many tablet manufacturers are waiting for Android 3.0 Honeycomb to be released early next year.
Update: Acer showed Tegra 2-based Android 2.2 tablets. However one was 7 inches and another was a 10-inch 1280×800 pixel variety and neither will ship until April with Honeycomb. (images below)
