Premature launch
CES seems to start earlier every year, and Toshiba has barely given us time to get over the excesses of the festive period before issuing its first CES-related announcement.
In common with many of the other announcements we anticipate from this year's Vegas tech fest, this one is a tablet. We also expect most of its fellow announcements to be hamstrung by the same issue: tablet optimisation - or lack of - on Android.
Toshiba launched the Folio at IFA back on September of last year, running Android 2.2. But before long it was being withdrawn from the shops amid widespread complaints from customers, with much, if not all, of the issues attributable to the fact that Android is simply not a tablet OS right now.
The next version of Android, which will be named Honeycomb, will be, and frankly there's no point in buying an Android tablet until then, in our opinion. Following the first faltering efforts, OEMs agree, it seems.
While we've yet to see a press release from Tosh, it has told several media the new device won't be launched until Honeycomb is ready, which is expected to happen in the first half of this year. It has a 10.1 in screen, but the name has yet to be confirmed.
Sadly we expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing at this year's CES - tablets that can't be turned on and with no launch date because we don't know when Honeycomb will be ready. This is the distinct disadvantage members of the Android ecosystem are at compared to the likes of Apple, but also RIM and HP, who have their own OSs.
In fact the first half of this year is a great opportunity for other aspiring tablet players to make their move, before Apple launches the iPad 2 and the avalanche of Honeycomb tablets arrive. But we fear that may be hoping too much - please prove us wrong.
