Year of the Tablet Takes Another Stab at It

Joshua Brustein, NY Times: " ... [2010] became the Year of the iPad. This year, manufacturers are promising it will be different, saying that after the success of the iPad, they have learned a lot about what consumers want in a tablet. 'We could have done this a year ago and rushed it out, but it wouldn’t have had the right features,' said Phil Osako, director of product marketing at Toshiba, which is introducing a new tablet at this year’s show, which begins Thursday in Las Vegas. ... " Other players: HP, Motorola, RIM. "Perhaps the most important feature is the ability to watch high-quality video, say industry analysts, pointing to market research showing that, above all, consumers want to use tablets for all kinds of media consumption — watching films, looking at and sharing photographs, playing games. 'Apple competitors’ first instinct was to build a cheaper device and put a cheaper processor in it,' said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst with Forrester Research ... 'The problem with that is that it wouldn’t have been as good for the video screens.' ... "