Riding on the back of worldwide sales of more than 10 million Galaxy S smartphones, Samsung looks a cert to team up with Microsoft to launch a new 10 inch tablet with slide-down QWERTY keyboard. The release of the Windows-based tablet is one of the hottest rumours at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and promises to take the fight right up to the iPad, which has enjoyed 11 months of dominance in the tablet space.
The general feeling is that the new tablet (code-named “Gloria”) will build on the success of the company’s first tablet, the Android-based 7 inch Galaxy S Tab, which launched in Australia in November.
Samsung is no stranger to the whole QWERTY-on-a-Windows-tablet concept, having developed the Samsung Q1 Ultra back in the days when the iPad was still a twinkle in Steve Jobs’s eyes.
Sources at CES maintain that Samsung will be having its custom interface overlay on top of Windows 7. The tablet is likely to come to Oz in Autumn 2011.
Peter Blasina is attending CES 2011 as a guest of Samsung Australia.
