Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously (or infamously, depending on
your point of view) lashed out against Google Android tablets during his company’s
October earnings call, denouncing them as incapable of competing with the iPad.
The "painful lesson," Jobs told analysts and media listening
to that call, would come when competing tablet makers realized their tablets
were too small, "abandoning developers and customers who jumped on the 7-inch
bandwagon."
And that was just one salvo. "I have a hard time imagining
what those [competing] strategies are," Jobs said, responding to an analyst’s
question about rival tablets setting to challenge the iPad throughout 2011. "We
think Android is very, very fragmented, and becoming more fragmented by the
day."
Welcome to Google’s counter-fire: Android 3.0, code-named Honeycomb,
which the search-engine giant will preview for media Feb. 2 at its Mountain
View, Calif., headquarters.
Honeycomb has been designed with larger screens in mind,
including a retooled, tablet-friendly virtual keyboard and a brand-new system
bar along the bottom of the screen. Google has also tinkered with the Web
browser, which now offers tabbed browsing for multiple Web windows, and support
for 3D graphics.
For more, read the eWeek article: Apple iPad Faces Risks from Android 3.0 Honeycomb.