The Apple iPad not your cup of tea? Not to worry, you’ll have a lot more selection in the tablet market come the end of 2010! Italian website Notebook Italia (translated link) has revealed what looks to be a set of genuine images of Toshiba’s Smart Pad, as the device looks similar to what we had already seen from the prototype.

Rumored Specs

The tablet is rumored to have a 10″ display, and an NVIDIA Tegra chip running all of the operations behind the scenes. The interesting point that is made here is that the Smart Pad looks set to run on Google’s Android OS, as opposed to Windows 7 which had been rumored previously.

The more interesting aspects of this tablet come in the ports department, however. Many users will be excited to see the existence of both a HDMI, USB and Micro USB port available on the side of the tablet. These are located next to what looks like an SD card slot too, although this isn’t mentioned in the original source’s post.

Another exciting addition to the hardware is a front facing camera, which will no doubt make use of Android applications such as Fring for video calling “á la FaceTime”.

As this tablet may be on track to be released before the second generation iPad (if it’s released at all – all we’ve seen at the moment is a prototype), the front facing camera may be a huge selling point for Toshiba until Apple include one with the next iPad.

I’m curious to see how the quality of the video calling will turn out on the 10 inch screen, however, as the quality of services such as Fring and FaceTime isn’t exactly stellar on smaller smartphone screens.

I guess we will just have to see what happens around November time with competitors Blackberry and their proposed ‘BlackPad’.

With Notepads, Laptops and Tablets all getting lighter, faster and reputable platforms being installed onto them such as Windows, Android and iOS4, we’ve seen many releases over the past few months.  The most popular tablet by far has been the Apple iPad.

The concept of the iPad was incorporating a capacitive touch screen (runs on a heat source, no stylus) and a larger version of an iPod Touch. The iPad has proved extremely popular for something so simple and so similar to the aforementioned iPod Touch, however it has ended up selling two million units within two months.

Apple are currently the market leader for “Tablets”, however many other vendors want a share of that market, meaning we have seen a lot of leaks online for tablets such as the HP Slate.  Due to the recent acquisition of Palm by HP, the Slate will probably not end up with Windows 7, but more likely webOS – the operating system currently used in Palm phones.

We have also seen products from Lenovo and Samsung where they have crammed Android onto their tablet products.  However, with virtually every manufacture cramming Android into their product, even the knock off ones from China, this may not provide them with a competitive edge or a compelling reason to buy.

In the past quarter we have seen the release of the Dell Streak which was produced as a smartphone but with browsing compatibility and no calling function. The Dell Streak can only be compared to the iPad as it’s marketed with a Data Plan.

Dell’s attempt at competing with the iPhone is likely to be put on hold until a more competitive operating system is released – Windows Mobile 7.

A lot of us are still waiting for a proper tablet to be introduced to the SME market.  The manufacturer who currently has the largest foothold in the SME gadget marketplace e.g. smartphones is RIM with its Blackberry product range. As Blackberry currently produce smartphones sold to both SME and Consumer, we know that they have the right credentials to work in both markets.

The online rumours surrounding Blackberry and the probability of them producing a Tablet has steadily been increasing. Recently, thanks to Mobile Crunch, they have discovered that Blackberry have registered a domain ‘www.blackpad.com’ for themselves. This could possibly suggest that RIM/ Blackberry have something up their sleeves – all that we know is that Blackberry is possibly developing something which will go into direct competition with Apple.

The Balckberry tablet is expected to have the following iPad killing features:

• Two cameras (one front facing)
• A faster processor
• New BlackberryOS6
• Bluetooth

and a few other’s that will definitely set it apart from the competition.

Whilst many features are still quite vague, we do know that Blackberry are producing it with a 9.7inch screen, it will make it work very close with their other Blackberry products and that it will be unveiled in November ready for Christmas.

Stay tuned for more information.