LG Tablet to Feature Android OS

Smartphone-maker LG Electronics is planning to release a tablet running Google's Android operating system, the Wall Street Journal reported July 6.

While LG in June showed off a tablet prototype running Microsoft's Window 7, at the Computex 2010 show in Taiwan, it's not an enormous stretch that the company should also be at work on an Android version.

In January, LG President and CEO Skott Ahn announced a new goal for the company, which currently holds the No. 3 position in the worldwide handset market. By 2012, Ahn said, he wanted LG to "become one of the global top two." A large part of LG's strategy for knocking either Nokia, the top player in the market, or Samsung, in the No. 2 spot, out of position by 2012, includes the wide-scale adoption of Android, which is expected to figure in the majority of the 20 smartphones that LG currently has in the pipeline.

"LG ... is certainly set to take advantage of the momentum we are seeing [with Android]," Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi told eWEEK after LG's January announcement. Strategy Analytics Analyst Bonnie Joy added that to do so, LG would need to "effectively differentiate" itself from the competition.

Whether it can do so in both the smartphone and tablet markets remains to be seen. Rival Samsung also has an Android-based tablet in the works, and Dell recently debuted the Streak, a small-tablet-slash-big-smartphone with a 5-inch display and the Android OS. Additionally, the very latest version of Android, code-named Gingerbread, is rumored to be included on the tablet that Google and Verizon are building together.

Beyond sharing the news of the tablet's operating system, LG offered no other details on this second tablet model, remaining mum about the markets the device will launch in or any pricing details.