Sony is the latest competitor to offer products aimed at chipping away at the iPad's 80% share of the rapidly growing tablet market. Sony said Tuesday it aims to be the top seller of Android-based tablet computers by next year.
Sony Unveils New Tablets
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Sony unveils one of its two soon-to-be-released tablets, the S1.
Sony's two tablets, code-named S1 and S2, will be released sometime after the fall. The S1 has a typical tablet shape and tapers down from one thicker side. It has a 9.4-inch touch-screen display. The S2 is a cylindrical, clamshell device that opens and closes, with two 5.5-inch touch-screen displays.
Sony said the tablets will come with wireless connectivity through Wi-Fi or high-speed mobile-phone services. The company didn't specify what mobile carriers it plans to work with and offered no details on sales targets. It also didn't disclose pricing except to say that the tablets would be "competitive."
Japan Real Time
Sony also offered a preview of two new Vaio personal computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. The company briefly showed a picture of a Vaio Freestyle Hybrid PC, which looks like a tablet with a slide-out keyboard. Sony also displayed a thin Ultra Mobile PC. The company didn't offer details about the products except to say both are expected out before year-end.
Sony plans to enter the tablet-computer market later this year with two models running Google's Android operating system, but how do the devices size up next to competitors like Apple's iPad? WSJ's Jake Schlesinger and Daisuke Wakabayashi discuss.
Sony aims to position its tablet computers as do-all entertainment devices tapping into its network of video, music, electronic books and videogames. Under Chief Executive Howard Stringer, Sony has pursued a strategy of linking online services to its wide range of electronic devices.
"We see this as a symbolic product to freely highlight what we can bring to the table," said Kunimasa Suzuki, deputy president of Sony's consumer-products and services group. "We need the tablet to be the hero of our network strategy."
Sony faces an uphill climb in the tablet-computer market. While demand is strong, the field also is crowded with nearly every electronics, PC, and smartphone maker unveiling tablets.
Sony's new tablets will run the Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, which has been designed specifically to run on tablets. But the company's plans to debut the product after the autumn puts the product behind other non-Apple tablets running the same software.
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., with its Xoom device, introduced the world's first tablet running Honeycomb. Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc. and others plan to beat Sony to the market with Honeycomb tablets.
Sony executive Kunimasa Suzuki displays the company's S1, which has a typical tablet shape and will be released after the fall.
Mr. Suzuki, who is in charge of Sony's mobile-devices strategy, said the company aims to win over customers with its unique design and technologies to speed Web browsing and response times. The S1 and S2 also will be able to send videos to Sony television sets and serve as remote controls for other Sony TV sets and other products.
Both devices will run Nvidia Inc.'s Tegra 2 processors.
"It's a wickedly difficult market and a lot of people are fighting for number two, but Sony has as good of a chance as anyone," said Jay Defibaugh, equities research director at MF Global FXA Securities in Tokyo. "They will need to differentiate in a sea of new models flooding the market and they seem aware of that."
The global tablet market is expected to nearly quadruple this year to about 70 million units, expanding to almost 300 million by 2015, according to research firm Gartner. While two in every three tablets sold this year will be iPads, Gartner said, Android-based models are expected to whittle away at Apple's dominance. By 2015, Gartner forecasts that Apple will control 47% of the market to Android's 39%.
Write to Daisuke Wakabayashi at Daisuke.Wakabayashi@wsj.com
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'In the Plex' was written by Steven Levy, a technology reporter who says his latest work is "informed by a two-year deep dive into the company," reports the Daily Mail.
He reveals that when founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were on the hunt for a chief executive they wanted Steve Jobs to take up the job.
The only problem was that Jobs had a much better job at Apple - a much more superior company at the time.
He turned their offer down but because he saw the potential of Google he agreed to mentor Page and Brin, even sharing advisers.
Problems came when Google bought and started work on the Android mobile phone system.
Apple saw it as a direct threat to iPhone and relationships broke down with Jobs feeling betrayed by the pair.
When he saw features like the 'pinch-and-zoom' control to look at websites and images during a visit to Mountain View, California, the home of
'Googleplex', he was apparently furious.
He believed the best ideas from the iPhone had been stolen.
The book also looks at the company's decision to pull out of China in 2009, nine years after the decision to make in-roads into the country.
Hackers, believed to be state-sponsored, broke into Google email accounts so Brin decided it was time to pull out of China.
It was in the country that 'the worst moment in Google's history' came about.n executive was sacked after they gave iPods to Chinese government officials - a customary business practice. 
Google said any difficulty users in China may have faced in the past few weeks accessing its email service was likely to be the result of government blocks, a Google spokeswoman said in a statement.
By partnering with several big-name publishers and content providers such as The New York Times, Apple stakes its claim to the digital publishing market, one of the few areas of electronic entertainment where it doesn’t already have an established presence.
Mr. Jobs described the tablet yesterday as the most advanced technology in Apple’s history: “better than the laptop, better than the smart phone.”
But despite several glowing reviews from critics about everything from its crystal-clear screen to its blazing speed, the tablet essentially represents a supercharged version of previous Apple products.
“[The iPad is] a very good replacement or upgrade for the iPod Touch, and that’s about as faint a praise as you can offer,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey.
“Even Jobs himself tried to position this as a brand new category,” he said. “And then he went on to introduce a very large iPod Touch.”
