Technology Slice Blog

Android Tablet Preview - When my boss asks me what tablets I expect to see at CES, I have to laugh a little. It's a nervous laugh. Maybe I'm overreacting, but with the iPad's breakout success this year, I'm expecting a tidal wave of tablets at CES 2011. There are the obvious elephants in the room. RIM will surely be making a fuss about its PlayBook. HP should have a WebOS tablet to show off (or risk humiliation, at this point). And as for Microsoft, if we don't see a branded tablet we should at least see a convincing strategy for how the company plans to compete. But it's not the big guys that are giving me heartburn heading into CES--it's the rapidly expanding tribe of Android tablet manufacturers. With Google's tablet-optimized version of Android (aka, Honeycomb) slated for next year, any manufacturer not already invested in brewing its own tablet OS will be throwing its hat in the Android ring. Android Tablet Preview

Andy Rubin Shows Off Android Tablet - A 3D version of Google Maps will accompany a Motorola tablet running Honeycomb, the next version of Google's Android, according to Google's Andy Rubin. Rubin showed off the unreleased prototype tablet at the opening session of D: Dive Into Mobile in San Francisco, the same day that the company announced plans to ship Gingerbread, Android version 2.3. Honeycomb and the Motorola tablet will arrive at some point next year, Rubin said, showing off the Google Maps application and eliciting more than one "oooh" from the crowd of mobile professionals. He declined to provide any further details about the tablet. Andy Rubin Shows Off Android Tablet