HTC launching Android tablet in March?

By Geoff Duncan January 20, 2011

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although HTC hasn’t made any formal announcements—and was noticeably tight-lipped at this month’s CES show in Las Vegas—DigiTimes is reporting that component manufacturers supplying HTC say the company is getting ready to launch three Android-powered tablets—and the first one could launch in the United States as early as March.

Dubbed “Flyer,” the first tablet will apparently be a 7-inch Android device running Android 2.3, and HTC plans to launch it with a U.S. mobile carrier in March, potentially beating highly-anticipated products like the Motorola Xoom and the RIM PlayBook to market. (A March launch date would likely put it on shelves before Apple’s expected update to the Apple iPad, too.)

DigiTimes reports HTC will follow up the Flyer with two as-yet-unnamed tablets by the middle of 2011: those tablets will feature the tablet-optimized Android 3.0 “Gingerbread.”

Manufacturers are scrambling to bring Android-based tablets to markets to compete with the Apple iPad, which so far is dominating the nascent tablet computing market. Apple managed to sell a stunning 14 million iPads from April through December of 2010; so far, the iPad’s primarily competitor is the smaller Samsung Galaxy Tab, which has sold more than 1 million units since its launch in October.

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