New details have emerged about the tablet plans of Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Research In Motion, if a price sheet, said to a be a leaked road map from a
big-box retailer, is correct.
Pre Central posted the roadmap March 14,
and it shows the 10-inch Motorola Xoom going on sale March 17 for $649,
followed by the 7-inch RIM BlackBerry PlayBook March 27, for $499, $599 and
$699, based on configurations.
Farther down the line, however, it
appears that HP’s 9.7-inch TouchPad, which company officials have so far
only said will launch "this summer," is slated for a June arrival, at
$499 and $599, for a 16GB WiFi version and a 32GB version, respectively.
Additionally, it seems HP is also
working on a 7-inch model Ösaid to be codenamed "Opal," according to Pre Central, that’s slated for a September release.
Those details match up with those
that a
source fed to Engadget in January, reporting that HP was working on two
tablets, a larger device codenamed "Topaz" and a smaller one called
Opal, which would ship three months later than its larger mate. The source also
shared that the tablets would likely offer induction-based charging, similar to
the Palm Pre’s Touchstone charger, and a feature called Tap-to-Share, which
lets users share a link, a document or a song between devices by tapping them
together. A "huge amount" of cloud storage was also expected to be
offered.
For more, read the eWEEK article: HP TouchPad Planned for June, 7-Inch Tablet in September: Report.
