Business Bytes
Renee Oricchio

Tablet Wars: Thinning the Herd

 

Here's what I am seeing.  Consumers have spoken. Tablets are of high interest and are in high demand. However, that only applies to the Apple iPad and full-size Android tablets. Note these recent headlines:

1. Sprint just dropped the 4G version of Research in Motion's Blackberry Playbook. The WiFi version will be available for awhile, but you better act fast if you want it. I'm guessing it won't be around long. The Playbook has only been around since April.

2. HP's TouchPad featuring WebOS (Palm's old mobile touch operating system) isn't exactly flying off the shelves. HP dropped the price earlier this month by $200 for a limited time only to light a fire under back to school sales. We'll see!
 
3. Dell might have had better luck with the Streak, since it was an Android tablet, if not for two factors. One, it features an older version of Android and two, more importantly, it was not a full-size tablet. It had a five-inch screen. It was clearly too big to be a smartphone and not so clearly too small to be a tablet (But now we know, so thank you Dell for answering that question. Yes, a 10-inch screen is the sweet spot.)

4. Acer may regret not learning from Dell's mistake that size does matter when it comes to tablets. It's coming out with a new seven-inch screen tablet after a flat response to its Iconia tablet that came out last Spring.  The new bigger than a Streak, smaller than an iPad tablet will go for $345. Interestingly enough, Acer's founder Stan Shih isn't exactly much of a cheerleader on this one. Shih recently referred to both tablets and ultrabooks as a  "fad" and "short term phenomena."

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio