JOIN USSony announced it is entering Apple's iPad dominated tablet market with not one, but two devices. The tablets, called S1 and S2, will use an operating system based on Google's Android 3.0.
And in what Sony hopes will provide a key selling point, the latter has two 5.5-inch displays that can be folded like a book. The S1 has a 9.4-inch display. Both will be Wi-Fi and 3G/4G compatible, Sony's Kunimasa Suzuki said during a press event in Tokyo, according to the Daily Mail.
They will both allow the use of Sony PlayStation games and are designed for sending e-mails, social networking, and enjoying online content such as movies, music and electronic books.
"We offer what is uniquely Sony," Suzuki said after demonstrating how the S1 was designed with a tapered width for carrying around 'like a magazine.' Sony did not give any indication of how much the tablets will cost or when they will be released.
The devices will connect to Sony's cloud-computing based library of content such as movies and music, as well as to PlayStation games adapted for running on Android and digital books from Sony's Reader store.
Sales of tablet devices are expected to quadruple to about 294 million units between 2011 and 2015, with almost half that Android-based, research firm Gartner has forecast.
Suzuki raised eyebrows in January when he told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that Sony was aiming for the number two spot in the tablet market within a year even though it had yet to put a product on the market.