Motorola CEO says 7-inch tablet due this year, again

By on Feb 28, 2011 at 5:50 PM
Tablets February 28, 2011

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco on Monday, Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha repeated the company’s plans to issue a tablet with a 7-inch form factor this year. Jha’s new claim mirrors remarks he made to the same effect during a keynote speech at the Credit Suisse 2010 Technology Conference late last year. The CEO said earlier that both 7 and 10-inch form factors will be “quite meaningful” to the company’s tablet business. Jha’s repeat mention of the coming smaller tablet has tech blogs buzzing just as it did the first time around, as the company has yet to name any specific tablet devices beyond the newly launched Motorola XOOM. Jha also noted during his talk that all of Motorola’s high-end smartphones will include compatibility with laptop dock accessories beginning later this year.

Tags:
, , , , , , , , ,
7 Comments

Related Articles

  • Anonymous

    Does not matter the tablet will not sell if the cost is more than $399.00.

  • Anonymous

    I would not buy a tablet from that dude.

  • idroid

    #FAIL didn’t Steve jobs say that was to small to big to compete with phones and too small to compete with tablets

  • Anonymous

    That’s a step backwards from the nice tablet that they’ve already released.

    “We have this really great product, but later this year we are releasing a crappier version! Everyone get excited!”

    I understand why manufacturers, pre-Honeycomb, had to pretend that 7 inches was a viable form-factor. Those days are over. Get with the times, Sanjay!

  • Anonymous

    A reliable sign that there will be a big effort over a 7 inch tablet market was Apple’s typical preemptive smokescreen a few months ago that all tablets of that size would be “DOA”. That is, of course, until the 7 inch Ipad whereupon people’s hands and fingers will magically shrink!

    I did have a chance to see and work with a Xoom 10 inch, a Galaxy 7 inch and even a Dell 5 inch, side-by-side last week. The Xoom was fastest, thinnest, best built and best OS, but so heavy and awkard in hand! The Galaxy, although not near the Xoom’s equal in build or performance (it was an uninspired OS and box-like in appearance and feel) nontheless worked so much better in terms of using the touchscreen to type, that it offset the other advantadges of the Xoom to a surprising degree. Even with the Galaxy, typing in landscape mode was difficult, while a natural breeze when in portrait. The Xoom, OTOH, for typing, was awkwark in portrait and really awkward in landscape. and since its all beautiful screen, you hold the Xoom by its slim edges, which exacerbates the unpleasant weightiness. The Dell 5 inch seemed too much the tweener, too big for a smart-phone and too small for a tablet. The 7 inch could be the sweet spot, but we will see. Over all the touchscreen keyboards on both the Xoom and the Galaxy were light years better than any I’d used or seen before.

    Seeing all 3 sizes in a row and comparing each with the other, it makes perfect sense to me that Motorola would want to bring its power and build quality to the smaller form.

    • Anonymous

      I read this article some place on the net. Sorry I can’t remember the site but I think you copied and paste this. Nice article and I totally agree with it. Steve Jobs’ is a dictator and wants to be a tech evangelist “7″ tablets DOA” . 7″ fine for a portable tablet and I can’t wait until sales figures prove him wrong.

      • Booboolala2000

        Apple is releasing a 7″ ipad along with the sub 10″ version. There is a market for them. I have big hands so I will stick with my XOOM for the long haul. The keyboard in portrait is almost perfect. Thumb keyboard as a replacement is good too.

blog comments powered by Disqus