Slash Lane
Schmidt's comments, in which he said the device will be "a tablet of the highest quality," came in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (via Slash Gear). The comments signal that Google plans to make another push to counter Apple's iPad.
Google's first formal attempt to break into the tablet market came earlier this year with the Motorola Xoom, which ran a tablet-exclusive operating system in Android 3.0. But the Xoom failed to catch on while Apple continued to see record sales of the iPad.
The latest version of the Android, dubbed "Ice Cream Sandwich," unites Honeycomb, the tablet-specific variant of the mobile operating system, with Gingerbread, which was designed for smartphones. It debuted last month on the Galaxy Nexus smartphone.
The Nexus branding is used by Google to highlight "pure" Android devices that ship with the stock version of the operating system. Though Google championed Motorola's Xoom at launch, it did not gain the Nexus branding.
Android tablets have struggled thus far, and even failed to outsell HP's discontinued TouchPad, which saw its sales bolstered by a $99 fire sale. Recent reports have suggested that Amazon's Kindle Fire, which runs a heavily modified version of Android and grants users access to Amazon's own application store, has taken the number two spot in tablet sales since it debuted last month.
Schmidt also confirmed in the interview that Google plans to leverage its own voice recognition technology to compete with Apple's Siri, found in the iPhone 4S. One rumor published last week claimed that Google is preparing its own voice assistant, code-named "Majel," to counter Siri.
Malcolm Owen
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
Amber Neely
150 Comments
Is this pretty much the same Google/LG Nexus tablet rumor from earlier in the year? I'll believe it when I see it.
And every developer is going to be dying to develop for Android soon.
Google suffers from verbal diarrhea.
Just you wait, in 6 months, blah blah blah.
With Android, it's always about 6 months from now, never today.
Is this pretty much the same Google/LG Nexus tablet rumor from earlier in the year? I'll believe it when I see it.
I thought the LG rumor was the phone, hence the rumored name nexus prime.
In seeming unrelated but possibly could be related news:
British Telecom sues Google on multiple patent breaches
BT, the U.K. telecoms company, has launched legal action in the U.S. against Google (GOOG-Q622.86-3.10-0.50%) for patent infringement in a number of areas crucial to the U.S. technology group?s search, maps and music services, as well as its Android phone platform.
BT claims infringement of patents in technologies behind location-based services, navigation and guidance information, as well as access to mobile services and content.
http://tinyurl.com/7clnd8k
I thought the LG rumor was the phone, hence the rumored name nexus prime.
No, I'm pretty certain it was a tablet.
I'll post the link when I find it. Should be just a few.
EDIT: This was a fairly easy find. Reported by several different sources earlier in the year.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20048237-251.html