review There’s nothing like a little controversy to drive up demand for a new gadget. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the famous tablet Apple didn’t want us to get our hands on, and yet despite its best efforts in the courtroom, Samsung was successful at getting the injunction against Aussie sales lifted in time for Christmas. Was it worth all the legal wrangling? Read on to find out.

Design
After all the fuss, we were expecting the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to look a lot more like the iPad. Perhaps if you’d never seen an iPad before, and assumed any tablet-looking device was an iPad, you’d make that mistake, notwithstanding the Samsung logos emblazoned on the front and back. But holding the white iPad 2 and white Galaxy Tab 10.1 side-by-side, you’d never mistake one for the other. The white iPad 2 has a white bezel around the screen, a metal back and 9.7” display in a 4:3 aspect ratio, while the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a black bezel around the screen, a plastic white back with chrome frame, and a 10.1” display 16:10 aspect ratio.

With the obligatory iPad comparisons out of the way, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a handsome device in its own right – possibly the best-looking Android tablet we’ve come across so far. At 565g and a skinny 8.6mm thick, it’s both the lightest and thinnest tablet for its size. As with most tablets, the battery is sealed in to keep it slim as possible, but the Galaxy Tab 10.1 skips a few of the niceties that we’ve come to expect in an Android tablet, namely a micro-USB port (it uses the same proprietary jack found on earlier Samsung tablets for charging and syncing), a HDMI port, and a microSD card slot. You can, however, buy adapters that attach to the proprietary port for adding HDMI, USB and SD card reader functionality.

Features
There are no real surprises on the Galaxy Tab 10.1’s spec sheet. It has the stock-standard 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 10.1” 1280 x 800 display, front and back cameras, and both Wi-Fi and 3G versions. For some reason, Samsung has skipped the 32GB option in favour of 16GB and 64GB storage capacities, and this is something you’ll want to get right up-front, as there’s no microSD slot for adding extra storage. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 uses a PLS (plane to line switching) LCD rather than the IPS panel found on most other tablets, and while this is meant to have the same effect for ultra-wide viewing angles, we found the screen dimmed considerably when moving it from side to side.

Software is the main way that Samsung differentiates the Galaxy Tab 10.1 from the legion of other Android tablets. Alas, it doesn’t run the latest Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android (Samsung says an over-the-air ICS update will be available in the first quarter of this year), but the Android Honeycomb 3.1 build running on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been heavily customised with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. It’s always a bit of hit or miss as to whether vendor skins are better or worse than the vanilla OS, but in this case, TouchWiz is a definite improvement over Honeycomb’s homely – and at times, confusing – UI.

Extras include lots of tablet-optimised widgets to choose from on the homescreen, a ‘Mini Apps Tray’ that you can for running supported applets (such as calendar, music player and calculator) on top of the app that’s currently open, an enhanced ‘Quick Panel’ notification area that includes shortcuts to system settings like Wi-Fi, GPS, screen brightness and auto-rotation, and custom fonts, apps and settings that put a much friendlier face on Honeycomb.

There’s also the usual Samsung software like Samsung Social Hub (an aggregator app for email, PIM, chat and social networking), Samsung Music Hub (a music subscription service), Kies Air (an app for wirelessly transferring files with a computer through a web browser), and the Samsung Apps store, and some Android apps exclusive to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 like MagShop (a digital newsstand app for ACP magazines) and ABC Reading Eggs (an educational children’s app). The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is also the only Android tablet we’ve come across so far with native support for DivX, XviD and WMV.

Performance
For day to day use, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 felt slightly snappier than other Android tablets we’ve reviewed. Things like launching apps, switching screen orientations, moving between homescreens and loading webpages felt just that little bit faster. Its Rightware Browsermark score of 88,970 is significantly faster than the average Android tablet score of 55,000, and not too far behind the Apple iPad’s score of 99,578.

Standard definition video playback was decent, if not occasionally choppy. The stock video player can’t play 720p MKV videos, but like most Android tablets, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 supports hardware acceleration for 720p and 1080p videos thanks to its Tegra 2 processor. Also like most Android tablets, 720p video (using the third party VPlayer) isn’t great, with audio sync problems and jerky playback. We didn’t even bother trying a 1080p video. Audio performance didn’t blow our hair back either – the Galaxy Tab 10.1 surround sound stereo speakers sound a lot better on paper than they do in practice, and while the volume is adequate for personal listening, you’ll struggle to hear it in noisy environments.

One thing we noticed when transferring files to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is that the USB connection only supports MTP – there’s no option for mounting the tablet as a USB mass storage device. It still mounts as an external drive on a WIndows computer, but if you’re using a Mac, you’ll need to either install the Samsung Kies desktop software, or use Kies Air over a Wi-Fi connection to transfer files.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1’s battery life is much better than expected for such a skinny device. Playing a loop of standard definition videos (Wi-Fi on, 3G off, screen brightness set to ‘Auto’), it lasted for just under 12 hours. This beats the iPad 2’s record of 10 hours of continuous video playback.

Conclusion
Based on its own merits, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is an impressive tablet. It’s sleek, good-looking, offers a great user experience out of the box and has the best battery life out of any tablet we’ve reviewed so far. But it’s not really the hardware we have an issue with – it’s the dearth of tablet-optimised apps for Honeycomb tablets. The app situation for Honeycomb has gotten a little better in the past few months, but it’s still drastically behind its main competitor, the Apple iPad 2 – an issue that’s all the more significant given both the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and iPad are priced identically. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn’t even get the benefit of the extra features usually found on Android tablets like microSD expansion, HDMI output and USB OTG; some of these features are available for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 using optional adapters, but then again, you can say the same for the iPad 2.

If you’re ideologically opposed to any Apple-branded products, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is definitely one of the better Android tablets available, but even then, your money may be better spent on one of the newer devices with quad-core processors and Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 starts at $579 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and $729 for the 16GB 3G model, and it’s available on plans from both Optus and Vodafone.

Jenneth Orantia turned her back on a lucrative career in law to pursue her unhealthy obsession with consumer technology. She’s known for having at least half a dozen of the latest gadgets on her person at a time, and once won a bottle of Dom Perignon for typing 78WPM on a Pocket PC with a stylus.

Image credit: Samsung

opinion In Australian society, so much of the ongoing narrative about the current generation of students in our schools is focused around the different way that they understand and use technology; and so much of that narrative is focused around fear.

Every second week a story pops up about a new way which technology can harm children. One week it’s cyber-bullying, with dramatic pictures being painted of abusive schoolyard bullies using blogs to hound fellow students into depression. Next it’s children inadvertently stumbling across Internet pornography, or using Facebook to harass teachers, spreading false rumours about them which could cost them their employment. And of course, there’s the ever-present threat of ‘sexting’.

Even the mundane can be troubling. Students, we’re told, no longer sit quietly in classrooms learning and working with their peers as older generations used to, faithfully solving problems from textbooks and respectfully listening to their teachers. Instead, the demon lure of technology seduces them away from their studies; distracting them with a constant series of text messages from their friends, pop-up instant message windows, YouTube videos and Facebook. School assignments are plagiarised from Wikipedia or outsourced to India. Teachers falsely believe they are in control of a class, when there’s actually a secret undercurrent of dissent undercutting their every attempt to impose discipline.

Underlying all of this constant hyperbole and outrage is a concept which has long found favour in anthropology, political science and even psychology: The idea of ‘the Other’ — a grouping of people or concepts which are alien to ourselves, and by extension, which help us define the limits of what we classify as “us”, or “we”.

Young people these days aren’t like us, is the dominant message. They’re different. They don’t obey. They can’t be controlled. They just want to muck around. They don’t want to learn. They’re into drugs, sex and dangerous music because they’re exposed to it too early via the Internet. They won’t make good workers when they finish school. They won’t get jobs. They’ll drop out and have teenage pregnancies. They’ll get into gangs. Generation Y, video games, Nintendo, social media, society will collapse and it’s all technology’s fault!

As a narrative, this idea of a ‘different’ generation of students passing through Australian schools armed with technology is a powerful one.

It allows the ‘adults’ of older generations such as politicians, social commentators, businesspeople and often even parents to easily apply what is perceived as a blanket trend to the next generation of young people. A thousand marketing articles are published discussing the different ways in which today’s young people can be better targeted through ‘social media’. Politicians call for Facebook to be banned or brought under control, religious groups attempt to have violent computer games banned and bureaucrats bulk issue laptops to school students in an attempt to address the needs of ‘digital natives’.

And it allows adults to more strongly reinforce their own identity construction — telling themselves they were part of a better, simpler time, when life wasn’t so complex and difficult to understand, with so many competing technological demands. A rose-tinged view of the past which aids in framing (or, perhaps more accurately, mis-framing) the policies of the future.

But, as with so many uses of the ‘Other’ in societal discourse (think of how Australian politicians regularly characterise refugees seeking to reach our shores, for example, or the historical injustices perpetrated on indigenous Australians), this one-sided narrative often obscures the real truth about what’s really going on inside our education system right now, and with young Australians in general.

Perhaps the deepest thinking I’ve witnessed recently about the actual complexities of what’s going on in schools has come from a one hour documentary produced by Queensland-based ICT analyst house Longhaus. It’s available online — and there’s a trailer below:

Longhaus’ documentary, entitled The Connected Generation, does begin by raising all of the same fears and stereotypes that the Australian media loves to perpetuate about technology in schools and the changing nature of today’s youth. After 20 minutes of watching it, you’re gasping for air and asking yourself how society will cope with this radically different generation. In the first part of the documentary, students are strongly characterised as ‘other’ than the viewer — different, alien, constantly having hidden conversations which ‘normal’ adults can’t penetrate. Chilling classical music plays in the background and it seems as if the doom of Australia’s education system is nigh.

However, at about a third of the way through the documentary, it takes a radical shift towards a more meaningful discussion.

At that stage, insightful, modern teachers enter the discussion to highlight how classrooms, educators, schools and even the nature of education itself are gradually shifting along with the technology and the students. Students admit they don’t know where things are going, and highlight the ongoing need for structure, guidance and the importance of schools as a focus for learning. Educators stress the ongoing and enduring fundamental nature of deep student and teacher relationships — despite the fact that on the face of it these relationships may be changing in some ways — moving online and moving outside hours through social media.

Supportive teachers who integrate technology into the learning process and are aware of the constantly shifting dynamics of students’ digital lives. Principals who are evolving their schools to become more flexible, more interactive and more student-focused. Departmental bureaucrats who are evolving curriculums to become more relevant in an age where legacy subject matter is quickly proven out of date by Google. Parents who are not isolated from their children’s lives, despite the fact that education and adoption of technology differs between generations.

What Longhaus paints is a picture of a more multi-faceted educational environment: Where technology is not only a threatening force for social disruption, but also an opportunity to free everyone in the process from unnecessary strictures; not only a tool employed by students but also one taken advantage of by teachers; not solely a factor which might impact on skillsets in demand by workforces but a factor which might create new ones.

In one memorable moment, several students laugh as they dream of an educational future with “no more textbooks, no more school uniforms and no more teachers”. “We might even have no teachers at all,” speculates another. “We might just have robots as our teachers.”

“I think students would like to think that teachers maybe won’t be needed any more in the classroom of the future, that we’ll all be online and we’ll be talking to robots,” chuckles a teacher shortly after in the documentary. “But I think what needs to happen is that step back from technology, and just remember it’s about education and that really can only come from collaborative learning, from meaningful learning activities and from social interaction.”

It’s this more complex future that I’d like to see discussed more when we think about technology in education — a meme which is only going to grow. Moving away from the binary idea of bulk-ordering laptops or even tablets for schools and focusing specifically on how those devices could be used to enhance educational outcomes. Moving away from the idea of banning bits of the Internet in schools and towards the idea of incentivising students through social media and video game theory to visit and use useful Internet sites. Moving away from the idea that ubiquitous mobile phone ownership by students is a threat to classroom discipline, and towards ideas about how it could be used to enhance collaboration between students.

It’s only when society at large starts to look at technology in education in this light — which, I think, many students and teachers in Australia’s education system already are — that we’ll get past this fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding how young Australians use technology differently and begin to realise that using technology in education isn’t what you are; it’s what you do, and that our young people aren’t somehow fundamentally different from us; they just got access to better tools at a younger age.

For many of us who are older, it’s about time we caught up with them.

news Japanese consumer electronics giant Toshiba yesterday launched what it described as “the world’s thinnest and lightest tablet” in Australia, putting the 10.1″ Android device on sale for a recommended retail price of $579.

The tablet, with a model name of AT200, is 7.7mm thin and weights 535 grams. For comparison, the Wi-Fi version of Apple’s iPad 2 tablet weighs in at 601 grams, and is 8.8mm thin.

The AT200 comes with an industry standard 10.1″ touchscreen, cameras on the back and front, and a range of ports including micro HDMI, micro USB 2.0 and microSD. It features a 16GB solid state drive, and its touchscreen is made from CorningR’s Gorilla glass material. It runs version 3.2 (Honeycomb) of Google’s Android platform and will be available in stores from early February. These details weren’t in Toshiba’s media release, but Gizmodo states that the tablet comes with a 1280×800 resolution screen, a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP4 CPU, and 1GB of RAM.

In addition to the AT200, Toshiba also today launched a second tablet in Australia, the AT1S0, which features a smaller 7″ screen but many of the same specifications as the AT200. It comes with a 1280×800 touchscreen, Android 3.2, an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core CPU, HD cameras on the back and front of the tablet and so on. It weighs in at 375 grams and also comes with micro HDMI, mini USB and microSD connections. This tablet can come with 8GB or 16GB of storage space and will retail for $399.

Toshiba last launched an Android tablet in June, the AT100. the device features similar specifications to the AT200, but is a bit thicker. It also went on sale for a recommended retail price of $579, but like many Android tablets over the past few months, it appears it has been discounted — selling at JB Hi-Fi currently for $467. It is believed that many of the Android tablets sold in Australia by manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung, Toshiba and Acer have sold poorly over the past six months and are consequently being discounted to make way for new stock.

So far, the local tablet market remains dominated by Apple’s iPad, which first launched in Australia in mid-2009 and was refreshed with the company’s iPad 2 model this year.

Toshiba also today announced several new laptops to be sold in Australia, the U840 Ultrabook (RRP of $1,499) and the gaming-oriented Qosmio X770 and multi-media-oriented Qosmio F750 (RRSP $1,999).

“We all want to look good on the move, but without compromising on the power or technology at our fingertips,” said Justin White, Product Marketing Manager, Toshiba in a statement. “Our thin, light and sleek tablets and ultrabooks pack a serious performance punch whether you’re settled in at home, hard at work in the office or out and about.”

opinion/analysis
I expect Toshiba’s new tablets to do about as well as its old tablets — that is, not well at all. The company’s stock currently defines ‘standard’ in the Android tablet space, and not that many people are buying Android tablets at all in Australia right now, let alone the most bog standard ones. Toshiba needs to differentiate itself from the pack at least a little if it is to succeed in its tablet play.

Image credit: Toshiba

review The first wave of Android tablets made it clear that raw specs weren’t going to win the war against the iPad. HDMI and USB ports, microSD expansion, dual-core Nvidia processors … who cared when the tablets themselves were ugly as sin and using one was akin to bashing one’s head against a wall? Now that the second wave of tablets are starting to hit, most of the top shelf Android vendors have shifted their emphasis to improving the user experience, including Sony with its new (yet rather unimaginatively-named) Tablet S. Is it enough to make it a worthwhile purchase against the almighty iPad? Read on to find out.

Design
If you’ve seen one Android tablet, you’ve seen them all. Unless it’s the Sony Tablet S, that is. Sony’s first post-iPad tablet has the distinction of being the most unique-looking one we’ve seen yet, with a wedge-shaped that works well in both orientations. If you’re holding the Tablet S in portrait, the thicker end hugs the curve made by your thumb and four fingers, rather like holding a magazine when you’ve folded the cover back, while in landscape, it props the tablet up at a slight angle, making it easier to type on the on-screen keyboard without straining your wrist, and there are grooves on either side for you to rest your thumbs in.

The Tablet S also has an unusual screen size of 9.4”, although its display resolution is still the standard 1280 x 800 that other Honeycomb tablets have. At 598g, it’s slightly lighter than the Wi-Fi iPad 2, and about 100g lighter than other 10” Android tablets. A hundred grams may not seem like a big deal, but it makes a big difference when you’re holding the Tablet S for extended periods. Coupled with its unique form factor, this makes the Tablet S the most ergonomic tablet we’ve reviewed so far. It’s also the only Honeycomb tablet that doesn’t feel weird to use in portrait orientation, despite having the same 16:9 aspect ratio of its Android stablemates.

Features
The main thing that sets the Tablet S apart from the hordes of other Android tablets is the way it brings together content from various Sony holdings. There’s the Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited services for streaming music and buying/renting movies and TV shows respectively, PlayStation certification that lets you use the Tablet S for playing a handful of PS One and PSP games, and a Media Remote app for remotely controlling various Sony A/V devices over Wi-Fi. The Tablet S is also the first and only tablet we know of with an infrared blaster which works with the bundled universal remote control app.

It’s an impressive collection of functions that looks great on paper, but scratch past the surface and things aren’t quite as rosy as they first appear. For starters, the Music Unlimited and Media Remote apps aren’t unique to the Tablet S, and can be downloaded to other Android devices, as well as the iPhone for the Media Remote app. The Video Unlimited service and PlayStation gaming is unique to certain Sony/Sony Ericsson devices, but the lack of HDMI output means you’re stuck watching any bought or rented videos on the Tablet S (unless you have a display device that supports DLNA), and the PlayStation One games available in the PS Store are limited to a dozen only.

Further, while the universal remote control app comes with hundreds of A/V devices in its library, it’s very US-centric, which means you won’t find FOXTEL or the Telstra T-BOX in there, nor brands like Kogan or Soniq – you’ll have to use the ‘learning’ feature of the app to add those remote controls in manually. The one bright spot was the Tablet S’ native support for the PlayStation 3 controller over Bluetooth – while the on-screen controls for the PlayStation One games work well enough, pairing it with a PS3 controller made playing the preloaded Crash Bandicoot and Pinball Heroes games far more enjoyable.

As far as hardware specs go, the Tablet S doesn’t deviate much from the mold. It sports a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 802.11n Wi-Fi (no 3G option – yet), 16GB or 32GB of storage, a five-megapixel camera and a full-sized SD card slot. It charges from a proprietary port at the bottom that reminds us of the old multi-pronged Sony Ericsson chargers (only wider), and there’s a micro-USB port that supports USB OTG for connecting digital cameras, flash drives, keyboards and mice – although it won’t charge the tablet, nor does it come with the requisite adapter cable for converting it into a full-sized USB port.

As with most other Android tablets, it runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb, only Sony has skinned it with a custom launcher and a few custom apps and widgets that make it a little more user-friendly than the default interface. The only down-side is that the Sony customisations seem to take up a lot of space; on our 16GB review unit, only 8.9GB was available for user storage.

Performance
Customisations notwithstanding, we found the Tablet S to be a snappy performer. For an Android tablet, that is. It’s still Honeycomb underneath – an OS that has always struck us as being the dim-witted cousin of mobile platforms. One area where it really proved itself was in the Rightware Browsermark benchmark. We’re used to seeing scores of around 55,000 for Android tablets, however the Sony Tablet S achieved a significantly higher result of 88,802. This score is better than any other Android device we’ve tried, save for the Ice Cream Sandwich-equipped Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and it beats the Apple iPhone 4S by 1378 points. That said, it’s still a little slower than the Apple iPad 2, which achieved a score of 99578.

For a Sony device, we were disappointed by the Tablet S’ screen and speakers. Considering the company makes the screens for so many other mobile devices on the market, the one gracing the Tablet S was a let-down: viewing angles were rather limited, and we found the highly-reflective coating to be distracting when using the tablet indoors. Colours are rich and vibrant when you’ve got the screen brightness dialled up to 100%, but at 50% (which is where we kept it to maximise battery life), the contrast is seriously lacking. The volume of the stereo speakers was decent, but at full power it produced considerable distortion and was noticeably lacking in both bass and depth.

Sony pulls the usual trick of sealing the battery in to minimise the tablet’s thickness – even if the Tablet S isn’t all that skinny to start with, given its wedge-shaped design. Run-time was slightly above average for a tablet; it was able to play movies continuously (with Wi-Fi on and screen set to 50% brightness) for 8.5 hours. It’s not as good as the iPad 2, which can manage the same feat for just over 10 hours, but still a respectable run-time that should see it easily lasting a full day’s worth of heavy usage.

Conclusion
You know what the Sony Tablet S kind of reminded us of? The Amazon Kindle Fire. Sony is using the same MO of bundling its various content services in to make the tablet more appealing than the standard-issue Android, and it comes close to pulling it off. Close, but no cigar. The crucial difference between the Kindle Fire and the Tablet S is price.

While Amazon made the Kindle Fire a loss leader in order to generate sales for its various digital content services, the Tablet S has the exact same price as the equivalent Wi-Fi iPad 2 – despite its content services being nowhere near as developed and extensive as Amazon’s (nor Apple’s, for that matter). The message Sony is sending is that it thinks its tablet is at least as good as Apple’s offering – a strategy that other tablet vendors (such as Motorola and BlackBerry) have tried and failed at miserably in the past. Sony seems to have come to its senses in the United States by slashing US$100 off the pricetag of both models, but local units have yet to see the same price reduction. This means the 16GB model is still selling for $579, while the 32GB version is selling for $689. If the last year is anything to go by, however, the price cuts should make their way down under fairly soon.

There are things we like about the Tablet S. It’s got a nice, portable form factor, the universal remote control app works really well (notwithstanding the lack of local device codes), and if Sony can beef up its lacklustre catalog of games in the PS Store, gaming on the Tablet S with a PS3 controller is lots of fun. It’s unique enough so as not to be labelled an iPad-wannabe, but an iPad killer it is not.

Jenneth Orantia turned her back on a lucrative career in law to pursue her unhealthy obsession with consumer technology. She’s known for having at least half a dozen of the latest gadgets on her person at a time, and once won a bottle of Dom Perignon for typing 78WPM on a Pocket PC with a stylus.

Image credit: Sony

news Japanese electronics giant Sony yesterday said it wouldn’t commit to cutting prices on its Tablet S Android tablet in Australia, despite chopping US$100 off the price of the device in the US this week.

Sony has slashed the price of its Tablet S in the US by US$100, bringing down the price of its 16GB version to US$399 and that of its 32GB version to US$499. Equipped with a 9.4 “ touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Universal IR remote, Video Unlimited, games for PS Certified devices and running on the Android Operating system, Tablet S is positioned as a competitor to the market leader, Apple’s iPad.

“As part of the Australian seasonal sales period, we offered a special six-day-only price for Sony Tablet (AU$499 for 16GB) from Boxing Day,” a local spokesperson for the company said in a statement yesterday. “We may consider some price adjustments in the future as we prepare to introduce the 3G version of the Sony Tablet, however nothing is confirmed at this stage. We still believe that Sony Tablet offers great value for its current pricing, as an all-round entertainment device.”

The Sony website boasts of several advantages of the Tablet S over the iPad, such as having Flash enabled, a built in Universal IR remote control, full-sized SD card slot, stereo speakers, pre-loaded games, a built-in USB port, 5 megapixel camera and wireless streaming to TVs with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatibility.

However, customer reviews have not been very favourable about its design, battery power and build quality. The new price cut follows a temporary price cut of US$50 that Sony implemented in December. Sony has now effectively moved itself in the US from being in the price zone of the iPad to the mid-priced tablet segment, which is already crowded with the likes of the Galaxy Tab, ASUS Transformer and Toshiba Thrive tablets.

Sony launched the Tablet S in Australia in October 2011. The company is being accused of price gouging as the price cuts in the US are not being implemented in Australia. The 16GB model that is retailing for US$399 is retailing for AU$579 on Sony Australia’s website. US customers also get extra freebies such a free 180-day trial of Sony’s Music Unlimited service. Despite the 6-day price cut for Boxing Day at AU$499, the tablet is now back to being sold for AU$579.

RIM has also slashed prices on all its Playbook models in the US, but has announced no such deals yet in Australia. With the Android tablet market slowing in Australia, multiple players in the market appear to be struggling to differentiate themselves.

Image credit: Sony

news A spokesperson for Research in Motion (RIM) has Australia declined to reveal whether RIM will apply US discounts on its PlayBook tablet to its Australian stock. RIM has announced substantial price cuts for a limited time up to February 4 on the PlayBook in the US, offering the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models all for US$299 each, saving buyers between US$200 to US$700.

The spokesperson admitted that there might be specials offered by carriers and retailers, including the bundle available from Optus for the BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry Torch 9860 on a $49 monthly plan. “There may be other specials via retailers to come, and there may be others currently in market (but we don’t have a list of them). There could be special pricing to come, or limited time offers like the one on the US Shop BlackBerry website, but that is not something that would be commented upon in advance,” the spokesperson said.

The US sale is on at RIM’s website. RIM appears to be attempting to ramp up sales of the poorly selling PlayBook after a rough year in 2011 when the company suffered low sales, poor reviews for the PlayBook, delays and outages. While the cut prices for the 32GB and 64GB version are a fair deal, the $299 price for the 16GB version might not be attractive to some buyers, since the PlayBook basic model had been on offer at a low $199 with some retailers during the run-up to the Christmas season.

In December 2011, Adele Beachley, Managing Director RIM Australia and New Zealand had announced deals that offered a free PlayBook to customers purchasing the BlackBerry Torch 9860 on the $49 Optus cap. This deal is valid up to the end of January 2012 on a 24-month contract period. Prior to that, Vodafone had made the 16GB model of the PlayBook available bundled with the BlackBerry Bold 9780 handset on a single monthly plan in June 2011. The PlayBook had been launched on June 20, 2011 through all of Australia’s major mobile carriers and retailer Harvey Norman, starting at the retail price of $579.

The PlayBook is currently available from Optus, Telstra and Vodafone in Australia. Running on the QNX operating system and a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor and 1GB RAM, the PlayBook’s features include Adobe Flash 10.3 support, 1080p video recording and playback, full multi-tasking and built-in HDMI, finer details such as drag-and-drop file transfers, a standard micro-USB connector and the ability to download files via the web browser.

Other features include a 7” size, a 3MP front-facing and 5MP rear-facing camera (both supporting full HD and 1080p video recording) and a 1024 x 600 resolution capacitive screen. The PlayBook weighs 425g and is less than half an inch thick.

Image credit: Research in Motion

news National telco Optus has announced the addition of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to its tablet range, just in time for Christmas. Starting from this week, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be on offer at the Optus online store bundled with a variety of plans for householders and small and medium businesses (SMBs).

The announcement comes a couple of weeks after Samsung won a key patent court battle against Apple, which had filed suit in Australia to block the launch of the Galaxy Tab in early August. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is regarded as a competitor in the tablet market to Apple’s iPad 2 tablet.

Customers can sign up for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the $49 Optus Tablet Plan, which provides 4GB of mobile broadband data over a 24-month period (minimum total cost is $1176).

Optus said the Galaxy Tab 10.1 features advanced business capabilities that SMB customers can benefit from—the $19.95 mobile broadband plan offers 2GB of mobile broadband data and 24/7 business technical support (minimum total cost is $958.80). The plan also allows Optus mobile customers to share data between their tablet and mobile service plans, giving SMBs the choice of using either of their mobile devices to remain connected while on the move.

Managing Director, Optus Small and Medium Business Group, Rohan Ganeson said, “The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been highly anticipated and we’re excited to be bringing it to our customers in time for Christmas.” Ganeson stressed on the importance of businesses staying connected with whatever is required to maintain smooth and competitive operations. “The GALAXY Tab 10.1 on the Optus Open Network provides our customers with a portable platform to do just that. With our 24 hours a day, seven days a week technical support team backing up our SMB customers, there’s no greater reason to choose Optus this holiday season.”

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is available for online purchase from December 21 from the Optus website and through selected Telechoice stores. More information on the pricing and availability details of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is available on the Optus website. SMBs can check for more information on business plans here.

Image credit: Samsung

news The Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) media tablet market experienced a visibly dampened growth in the third quarter of this year, with a rise of only 3.1 percent quarter on quarter (QoQ) with 434,000 units shipped, and much of the slowdown relating to the Android side of the sector.

As per International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker (2011 Q3), Australia contributed 86.2% of total shipments in ANZ—a rise of just 1.6% QoQ. Interestingly, the QoQ growth of Android media tablets in Q3 went in opposite directions across ANZ, dropping by 37% in Australia and growing by a little over 60% in New Zealand.

Yee-Kuan Lau, Market Analyst for IDC Australia said that the early hype in Australia around the range of Android media tablets had quietened down between Q2 and Q3, while Apple’s iPad 2 was continuing its upward momentum. “The exit of low-cost Android tablets such as Optus MyTab and Telstra T-Touch and the court case over Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 slowed down Android’s momentum in Australia as well,” Lau said.

The Australian tablet market has been seeing dramatic price cuts and extreme promotions throughout the year following the launch, earlier in 2011, of Android-based tablets by Motorola, Samsung, Acer, Toshiba and other rivals. The most recent price slash has been for the Motorola Xoom, selling for half-price in the holiday season.

Meanwhile, with a positive growth of 13.6% over Q2, New Zealand’s Q3 media tablet market showed a larger market expansion. “Android momentum is strong in New Zealand and the growth is due, amongst other things, to the collective efforts of major players such as Motorola, Acer, Asus and Samsung, which had the advantage to sell Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country,” said Lau.

Android-based media tablets unit share dropped by 8 points across Australia from the previous quarter, occupying 16.5% of the total market size, while Apple’s iPad 2 market share increased to 77.7% during the same period. The remaining shipments included RIM’s PlayBook and a one-off shipment of HP’s TouchPad. Lau added, “Apple continues to grow in ANZ with additional retail stores followed by a channel expansion: selling through Australian telco operators for the first time and appointing Ingram Micro as a second distributor in New Zealand.”

Lau pointed out the increased choice available for consumers of devices such as ultrabooks, even though the influence of this form factor on media tablets is negligible at this time. “IDC expects the media tablet momentum will pick up a notch when Android 4.0 tablets are launched and also in the long-run when LTE-capable devices hit the market, which will result in more media tablet sales through telco operators,” said Lau.

Projections for the Christmas period expect Android-based media tablet shipments in ANZ to remain below the 100,000 mark with a Q4 unit share at nearly 20%. Apple iOS is expected to maintain its leading market position. IDC predicts roughly 1.5 million units of media tablets will be shipped into the ANZ channel by the end of 2011. In spite of the lifting of the sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in December coinciding with the holiday season, IDC expects the Christmas sales to have a minimal effect on Q4 sales in Australia.

Image credit: Motorola

news The latest research conducted for Telstra by StollzNow Research has shown that one in three Australian small business owners are thinking of buying an iPad or other brand of tablet in the lead up to Christmas.

Telstra Business stated that its recent research of owners of small to medium businesses (SMBs) found that 28 percent would be purchasing a tablet for work. Currently only 9 percent of owners of SMBs are using tablets. For businesses already using mobile broadband, 66 percent have put a tablet on their Christmas wish list. The Telstra SMB survey was conducted between October 11th and 20th, 2011, and included owners of 321 SMBs, ranging from self-employed to those with 200 staff.

Will Irving, Telstra Business Group Managing Director talked about the popularity of tablets in the SMB market, with 86 percent of users stating that they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the devices. Irving said that smartphones and high-speed mobile broadband have been good business enablers, while tablets made the move to increased mobility easier.

“More than 60 percent have at least one staff member spending most of their time working away from their main business location,” Irving revealed. “Three-quarters of Australian SMEs are equipping staff with laptops, and more than half are now supplying smartphones for work purposes, rather than ordinary mobile phones.”

Irving pointed out that 89 percent of businesses that encourage staff to work away from the office, had found moderate to significant improvement in efficiency with the use of tablets.

Recently, Telstra had introduced the Apple iPad 2 into its range of tablets, to enable businesses to buy an iPad on a plan with a generous monthly data allowance and spread out the cost of the device over 24 months. Two Android-powered tablets in Telstra’s Business range are the Motorola XOOM and the Acer Iconia Tab A501 Pro.

opinion/analysis
I bought an iPad primarily for work several months ago and haven’t looked back since. I primarily use the device for doing ‘light’ work — emailing, reading RSS feeds and browsing other daily web sites. The difference between using it and a laptop is I don’t have to sit at my desk while using it; I can sit on a couch, in a comfy chair — anywhere, really. I would say that almost every small business in Australia will be using tablets within the next five years, as the devices gradually replace laptops and other devices (cash registers?).

Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay

news Korean electronics giant Samsung today claimed victory in its patent court battle against iPad manufacturer Apple and confirmed plans to launch its Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet before Christmas through a variety of Australian retailers.

Apple first filed suit against Samsung to block the launch of the Galaxy Tab in Australia in early August. However, after quite a few months of back and forth action, the High Court today refused a request from Apple which would have seen it able to appeal a move by the Federal Court allowing the Galaxy Tab to be sold.

“Samsung Electronics Australia is pleased with today’s judgment by the High Court of Australia to deny Apple’s request to appeal the decision of the Full Court,” the company said in a statement. “The Full Court of Australia decision on November 30 clearly affirmed our view that Apple’s claims lack merit and that an injunction should not have been imposed on the GALAXY Tab 10.1.”

Samsung said it was pleased to announce that the “highly anticipated” Galaxy Tab 10.1 would be available in stores “in time for the Christmas shopping period”, selling for a recommended retail price of $579 for the 16GB Wi-Fi version of the tablet, and a RRP of $729 for the 3G-enabled 16GB version. The tablet will be available from retailers including Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, the Good Guys, Myer, Bing Lee and OfficeWorks.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is seen as one of the main current competitors to Apple’s iPad 2 tablet, which has been on sale in Australia for the majority of 2011. Apple’s iPad range dominates the Australian market for tablets, with existing rivals such as Motorola’s Xoom, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook and the Acer Iconia Tab believed to have stolen only modest market share percentages from Apple over the past year.

Like several of the other Android tablets available at the moment, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a 10.1″ device with a touchscreen running at a resolution of 1280×800. Its CPU is a 1GHz dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 model, and it comes with version 3.1 (Honeycomb) of Google’s Android platform.

The 3G version supports the HSPA standard up to 21Mbps, compatible with all of Australia’s major mobile networks, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 comes with three megapixel rear and two megapixel front cameras. It can record 720p HD video. The device weighs 565g.

opinion/analysis
This victory for Samsung is pretty much a common sense one, in my view. Regardless of Apple’s no doubt extensive patent portfolio, competition in the tablet space is a good thing, especially when you’ve got one company currently dominating the entire scene with a market share which I personally believe is something between 80 and 90 percent in Australia.

However, I don’t expect the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to make much of a splash in Australia.

For starters, the tablet shares almost all of its specifications with other tablets such as the Xoom and the Iconia Tab. Those devices have been on the market for many months now, and have, by all accounts, sold pretty poorly. Are there any Australian consumers who have been hanging out for six months waiting for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to ship? Uh, no. There aren’t. The overwhelming majority of those consumers have bought an iPad, a PlayBook, another Android tablet or even a HP TouchPad by now.

Then there’s the price.

Frankly, why would you buy a 3G Samsung Galaxy Tab for $729, when you could buy a 3G Motorola Xoom for $300 cheaper from Kogan? It’s virtually the same hardware. It’s the same operating system. It’s the same 3G connectivity. But it’s almost half the price. Even JB Hi-Fi is selling the 32GB 3G version of the Xoom for $644. Are you going to pay $85 more for a device just because it’s Samsung? I don’t think so.

Then there’s the fact that the next batch of tablets is already on its way. The iPad 3 is now strongly rumoured for early 2012. The Motorola Xoom 2 has already been announced. Hell, even Samsung itself is rumoured to be introducing a hot new tablet early in 2012 with a screen similar to the ‘Retina Display’ on Apple’s iPhone 4 and 4S.

This is the reality which Samsung is facing. Even though it has undoubtedly gotten some publicity through Apple’s lawsuit against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, even though the tablet is probably among the best of the iPad rivals in Australia at the moment, even though it will be distributed widely, and most of all, even though Samsung won its lawsuit, that doesn’t mean the tablet will actually sell.

I wouldn’t buy it. Would you?

Image credit: Samsung