Dubai: Visual display vendor ViewSonic is diversifying its business by entering into the tablet PC industry to grab a bigger slice of the market share.
The US-headquartered company has launched new ViewPads — 10 and 7 inches — in the UAE market first followed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"The marketplace for tablets is large and just barely penetrated, so we see a strong demand for the tablets in the region," Junaid Gul, Regional Sales Manager — Middle East, ViewSonic, told Gulf News.
"We have shipped in around 1,000 pieces for the UAE market," he said, "and expect to sell around 1,000 pieces a month starting from February."
DisplaySearch analyst Richard Semenza said that the competition is going to be fierce. "We estimate that a hundred different tablet models are in development, though not all of them will reach store shelves."
ViewSonic is the first to launch a dual boot operating system — Windows 7 and Android 1.6 OS — in the UAE.
The capacitive screen 10-inch 1024x600 LCD screen ViewPad is powered by 1.66GHz Intel processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB storage capacity and expandable up to 32GB.
Gul said the product will retail for Dh2,199.
"Android's growing popularity among smartphone users could give tablets that run Google's system a leg up, particularly once Honeycomb is made available," he said.
Retail price
The Android 2.2 Froyo-powered 7-inch ViewPad is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 600MHz processor, 512RAM, 3G, 16GB storage capacity and expandable up to 32GB and it will retail for Dh1,899. It can be used a normal phone to make calls. Gul said, "We will be launching a 3G 10-inch model — ViewPad 10s — in the market in the next couple of months."
"This is the starting gun for tablets, except Apple had a yearlong lead in the race," BGC analyst Colin Gillis said. Apple was expected to sell more than 13 million iPads in 2010, making up the vast majority of the total market.
Although analysts believe the iPad will still account for the bulk of the 55 million tablets that Gartner Inc expects will be shipped, there's still room for rivals to vie for sales of the remaining 10 million to 15 million devices. It is going to be difficult for tablet makers and software providers to make inroads, though.
Gillis is overall optimistic about non-iPad tablets, mainly because so few people actually own one.
Goldman Sachs predicts iPad sales could top 37.2 million units in 2011 and technology research firm Gartner forecasts total tablet computer sales of 55 million units this year.
- 1,000: number of pieces shipped to UAE market
- 55m: tablet units forecast to be sold this year
