Samsung has released a teaser video of the 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab it is expected to introduce at an Orlando, Fla., event March 22.
Samsung sent out invitations at the start of this month, inviting journalists to “discover what the buzz is all about” and to join Samsung in Orlando as “we experience a world of endless technological possibility.”
The invitation, over the image of a tablet, asked: “What’s your Tab life? 78910.” Not a zip code, the numbers are thought to suggest Samsung’s eventual tablet lineup of 7-inch, 8.9-inch and 10-inch Galaxy Tabs models.
The new video – a trailer, if you will – reveals little, other than that the tablet is silver, appears to have a rear-facing camera with a flash and is clearly not trying to compete directly with the iPad or iPad 2. It’s undoubtedly smaller but also chubbier.
The video cuts between three people, two men and a woman, presumably talking about their Galaxy Tabs. One guy’s in a suit, the woman is also in business attire and the second guy, it’s implied, is a creative professional (note hip newsboy cap!). They’re also all in the vicinity of their 40th birthdays, if not north of it. Are we to believe the 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab is perhaps more enterprise-oriented, and will more directly compete with the BlackBerry PlayBook, which, if a reportedly leaked retailer roadmap proves correct, will launch March 27?
Making the likelihood of an 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab more likely still, another leaked roadmap, this one from Staples, according to a March 15 report from Engadget, lists a “Samsung 8.9” tablet running “Honeycomb” – the codename for the tablet-specific Android 3.0 – as “Coming Soon.” Just above it on the roadmap are three April-launching tablets – the 10-inch Motorola Xoom, a 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook and a 7-inch Dell Streak – making May, if not still late April, a possibility.
Following Apple’s March 2 introduction of the iPad 2, it was reported that executives at Samsung were newly thinking over a few things, after seeing what Apple had pulled off.
“We will have to improve the parts that are inadequate,” Lee Don-Joo, Samsung executive vice president, told the Yonhap news agency, Physorg.com reported March 4. “Apple made it very thin.”
Lee was also quoted as saying that Samsung had planned to price its 10-inch Galaxy Tab higher than its 7-inch model, but given that Apple had kept its price point the same, despite the iPad 2’s upgrades, it might reconsider this.
“We will have to think that over,” Lee said in the report.
Days later, the Korean news agency reported that, regardless of Lee’s comments, Samsung said the release of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was still going according to schedule.