TOKYO — Sony, a laggard in the booming tablet market, introduced its first tablet computers Tuesday in an ambitious attempt to grab second place in the market created and dominated by the iPad.
Sony’s devices will use the Android 3.0 operating system by Google, said Kunimasa Suzuki, deputy president of the consumer products and services group.
These will be the first tablets to enable the use of PlayStation games, said Mr. Suzuki, who produced one of the glossy black devices from his jacket pocket during a media presentation.
The tablets, code-named S1 and S2, will have Wi-Fi and will be compatible with 3G and 4G networks. Sony did not provide the retail prices.
The S1 has a display measuring 9.4 inches and is designed to make it easier to hold for long periods of time, Sony said. The S2 has two 5.5-inch displays in a clamshell design.
Mr. Suzuki raised eyebrows in January when he said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that Sony was aiming for the No. 2 spot in the tablet market within a year even though it had yet to put a product on the market.
“That effectively means they have to beat Samsung, which is a very tough rival,” said Nobuo Kurahashi, an analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities in Tokyo. “Although this is an interesting product, they have already been left behind in televisions, so it’s not going to be easy.”
The company, which had been criticized by analysts for failing to come up with a tablet offering after the release of the iPad in April 2010, has emphasized the need to differentiate its tablet from rivals’, even if that takes time.
“Although it’s a latecomer in the market, it has potential, as what you need is just one big uniqueness that can sell to customers — be it design or whatever,” said Lee Sun-tae, an analyst at Meritz Securities in Seoul.
Global sales of tablet devices are expected to quadruple to about 294 million units between 2011 and 2015, with almost half of that Android-based, the research firm Gartner has forecast.
In a bid to tap that burgeoning demand, competitors including Samsung Electronics, whose Galaxy Tab is Apple’s strongest competitor in the tablet market; Motorola; LG Electronics; and HTC are flooding the market with tablets running Android. Hewlett-Packard unveiled its entrant in the tablet race in February.
Shares in Sony, which reports its quarterly results on May 26, fell 2.1 percent on Tuesday in Tokyo.
You didn't think that Acer wouldn't be sharing some of its new tablets with its still-kicking Packard Bell subsidiary, did you? The latter has now debuted the Liberty Tab, its own spin on Acer's Iconia Tab A500. As you might expect, however, there aren't many differences beyond the name, with this one packing the same styling, 10-inch screen, Tegra 2 processor, dual cameras, and Honeycomb OS as its more widely-available counterpart. Launch details are still a bit iffy, but you can apparently expect this one to hit Europe sometime in June, with pricing to vary by country. Head on past the break for a hands-on video courtesy of Notebook Italia.