Lenovo Planning "LePad" Android Tablet For Release This Year

Well, what do you know? Another tablet PC! We're halfway joking, but there's no question that 2010 is quickly becoming the year of the tablet. Apple just this week released their first quarterly earnings with the iPad included in sales, and they managed to sell more iPad devices than Mac computers in the past quarter. That's a pretty clear indication that the tablet revolution is back on, and just about every other company in the market place is scrambling to catch up.

Lenovo has long since held an edge in the business notebook realm, with their rugged, classy machines seeming to end up in corporate buildings more often than not. But the company has generally shied away from anything too outrageous. They stepped out of line earlier this year by launching their first smartphone in China, and now it looks like they'll be joining the slate bandwagon a little later with the introduction of the LePad.


According to recent comments made by Liu Jun, senior vice president and president at Lenovo's Consumer Business Group, the forthcoming Lenovo tablet will utilize Google's Android operating system and will be released before the end of this year. Other specifications regarding screen size, internal storage, etc., have yet to be confirmed. It's also unclear when Lenovo will ship the LePad outside of its Chinese homeland; usually Lenovo prefers to "win" in China before spreading to other markets, so it may be well into 2011 before the LePad makes a U.S. debut. By that time, though, the tablet PC market may very well be completely saturated. We shall see.