One million sold, Samsung Galaxy Tabs, that is.
Over the weekend my former colleagues over at PCMag.com broke the news that, according to an e-mail from a Samsung spokeswoman, the company had sold more than a million of its new seven-inch-touchscreen, Android-2.2-running tablet devices.
That is significantly behind the more than eight million iPads Apple has sold since that device was introduced in April but quite a few analysts are predicting that Android-based devices will surpass iPad sales by the end of next year.
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That's because quite a few other devices are in the offing though not out yet. For this year's holiday shopping season the device is the only real competitor to the iPad.
While it has a smaller screen (seven inches compared to the iPad's 10-inch screen), the Android Market has gotten high marks for its amazing array of applications. The Galaxy Tab is also now available from five different mobile carriers compared to iPad being available (at the moment anyway) only on that of AT&T.
The Verizon version of the Galaxy Tab is available for $600 with a new contract and on Sprint for $400 with a new contract.
My former boss over at PC Magazine, Michael J. Miller, whose opinion I highly regard, wrote a couple of weeks ago that overall he likes the device. He spent several weeks living with it and said he found it had a lot going for it. His biggest criticism was that it just was not as polished yet as the iPad. He also thought that more of the Android applications it could run needed to take more advantage of its screen size which, while smaller than the iPad, was far larger than most of the smart phones running Android to date.
Another simple point that often gets overlooked by techies is that while it might fit in a coat or jacket pocket it is a little to bulky and weighty for comfort, not to mention that most people will probably be carrying it or an iPad for that matter in a brief case, book bag, large purse etc. — so why not a slightly larger screen?
For more information head over to the Samsung Galaxy Tab page online.
Blackberry PlayBook
While it is difficult for me to believe that it could ever catch up to either the iPad or now the coming wave of Android tablets — the earliest availability is slated for the first quarter of 2011 — the Blackberry Playbook will have some inherent advantages for the financial services sector.
The first of these will be the device's reliance on a Blackberry phone for its connectivity out in the wild, though it will have built in 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi support. Chances are good though, that the later will be locked down by corporate administrators (meaning you won't necessarily be able to automatically hop on to every coffee shop, hotel or airport access point you come across).
At the same time this reliance also means the Playbook will have out-of-the-box compatibility with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which is already in use with thousands of organizations and their fleets of Blackberry smart phones, the users of which number in the millions. That will make deployment far easier and less expensive when it comes to large corporate environments.
Security issues should be a little less scary for a lot of chief operating officers and security and compliance folks as well — being able to control the security of the devices through BES will be a natural advantage here.
The big question is and will remain RIM's Blackberry App World.
It trails far far behind both the Apple App Store and Android Market and it also remains a bit of a mystery as to how developers are adopting RIM's QNX operating system.
The latter does support HTML5 natively and rumor has it that a lot of Playbook apps will be built using Adobe AIR. RIM is also touting its video performance and it does natively support Adobe Flash, something the iPad does not do though there are workarounds for that.
For more on the Playbook, head over to the Research in Motion, Blackberry Playbook page online. You can sign up for updates as RIM sees fit to release them.
Reviews and hands-on coverage of the Samsung Galaxy Tab from PCMag.com:
Living with the Samsung Galaxy Tab
Samsung Galaxy Tab for Sprint Gets 'Unboxed'
Related stories on the iPad and Apple Mac from Investment News:
Finantix Wealth-X for iPad — the most beautiful financial planning program ever
Morningstar quietly adds QuoteSpeed to its advisory menu
Advisers with iPhones, meet the Cinemin Swivel micro projector
iPads taking SageView green, the trees say thank you
Reuters Insider technologically impressive [see the last few slideshow images]
Thomson Reuters begins the drip of iPad apps
Financial application for the Droid
