Motorola teases CES Android tablet announcement

Motorola (NYSE:MOT), seeking to drum up interest in its forthcoming Android tablet, released a teaser video for the as-yet-unnamed product, which is to debut at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. Motorola also used the opportunity to take swipes at tablet vendors Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung.

Click here to watch Motorola’s tablet teaser video.In its video, Motorola recounted the evolution of tablets (noting for instance that stones carrying Egyptian hieroglyphics had "good graphics, but weight makes for difficult portability"), and then called out Apple's iPad ("It's like a giant iPhone, but... it's like a giant iPhone) and Samsung's GalaxyTab ("Android OS, but Android OS... for a phone").

Apple has so far sold more than 7 million iPads since the device's release in April, and Samsung has sold more than 1 million GalaxyTabs since the gadget was released in October.

At the end of Motorola's video, a honeybee lands on Motorola's logo--presumably indicating Motorola's tablet will run version 3.0 of Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android platform, dubbed Honeycomb. Samsung's GalaxyTab runs Android 2.2, dubbed Froyo, which Google has said is not optimized for tablets. Little else is known about the Motorola tablet, though Google's Andy Rubin said recently it will sport Nvidia's dual-core Tegra 2 processor and video chatting. According to Engadget, the device also may be linked to Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ), which has been a critical partner for Motorola's smartphones this year.

Motorola's forthcoming tablet will have plenty of company at CES. Possible candidates to show off new devices include LG, Samsung, ZTE and others. Additionally, Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) could potentially offer new details about its PlayBook tablet, and Hewlett-Packard could provide some clues on its webOS tablet.

Indeed, Japan's NEC announced it will debut a number of new devices at the trade show next month, including a 7-inch Android tablet with dual screens and 3G and WiFi connectivity. NEC also will demonstrate a single-screen Android tablet.

For more:
- see this Engadget post
- see this NEC release

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