Sony Offers An Advance Glimpse of its Tablets

Sony on July 13 provided a sneak peek of the two Android 3.0-based tablet devices it announced in late April in Japan, as they progress toward their market debuts later this year. The Wi-Fi-only tablet, code-named S1, and its Wi-Fi and 3G (and eventually 4G)-capable dual-screen folding tablet cousin, code-named S2, were demonstrated at a press meeting held in Sony’s New York offices.

Sony showed off certain tech features it said would differentiate the devices in the market once they are released, while it made two related announcements. One was that AT&T would be the S2’s exclusive U.S. mobile broadband provider; David Haight, vice president of business development for AT&T emerging devices, said his company plans to offer pre-paid and post-paid data plans, with distribution and pricing to be announced at the products’ launch. The other was that a website, airappchallenge.com, had just launched, promoting a developers contest in conjunction with partner Adobe Systems designed to stimulate creation of Adobe AIR applications for the tablets. The contest, the Adobe AIR App Challenge, will award a total of $200,000 in cash prizes.

Kunimasa Suzuki, president of the VAIO and Mobile Business Group, Consumer Products & Services Group of Sony Corp., indicated four guiding principles the company used as criteria in the engineering of the tablets: optimally designed hardware and software; swift and smooth performance; network entertainment; and cross-device connectivity.