Tuesday, January 4, 2011

A New Year is Here, and it Looks to be the Year of the Tablet

Now that we've all shaken off the cobwebs from a weekend of ringing in the new year, it's time to look at what's ahead for social media and technology in 2011. First up is the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, which is just 2 short days away.

From January 6-9, tech geeks and gadget fans will swarm to Las Vegas, only to ignore the flashing lights of the Vegas Strip for the dull glow of backlit tablets. And trust me, there will be a lot of tablets.

If you've followed the tech world at all the past couple of months, that isn't breaking news. My RSS feed has been inundated with story after story about upcoming tablets being previewed this weekend at CES. In fact, I've heard rumors about 14 or 15 different companies who will be in Las Vegas looking to bet big money on this emerging tablet trend.

Some of the tablets have definitely peaked my interest (like Vizio's announcement yesterday), while other tablets aren't getting much more than a yawn (sorry, Acer).

However, the tablet innovation I'm most excited for this weekend isn't a tablet at all. Google is expected to unveil their latest, tablet-optimized version of the Android OS (codenamed "Honeycomb") in March, and I'm hoping that they'll have some sneak peeks available at CES.

The 2 main reasons why I'm more excited for Honeycomb than the actual tablets are:

  • Most of the upcoming tablets are going to run Android. 
  • The lack of tablet-ready apps for Android is, in my opinion, one of the major reason the iPad has maintained its dominance in the tablet market.
Obviously, we'll have to wait until this weekend to see whether or not these rumors will lead to anything substantial. But if you're a fan of tablets, there's a lot of reasons to be hopeful for the future.