SEOUL:
Samsung on Sunday unveiled an eight-inch tablet with phonecall capability to
rival
Apple's
recently launched iPad mini and to cement its market dominance by offering
devices in
a
variety of sizes.
The Galaxy Note 8.0 features an eight-inch
screen and, where it may steal a march on its rival
which measures 7.9-inches, the ability to make
phone calls.
The new device, now being marketed by Samsung as
a "tablet", is powered by Google's
Android software and will be showcased at the
four-day Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
beginning on February 25, the company said in a
statement.
Like previous incarnations of the Galaxy Note,
the device comes with a stylus pen allowing the
user to write or draw on the screen, which can
be split in two to run various programs at the same time.
Global sales will begin in the second quarter,
the firm said.
Samsung is the world's top maker of smartphones
and mobile phones in general.
The latest device -- the first from the company
to feature an eight-inch screen -- is set to fill a
gap in the firm's wide product lineup, which
ranges from the flagship smartphone Galaxy S to
the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note 2 and the 10.1-inch
Galaxy Tab tablet PC.
The firm has recently shifted its focus to its
Galaxy Note, which turned out to be far more
popular than the larger Galaxy Tab, offering the
Note in various sizes in a move that blurred the
lines between smartphones and tablet
PCs.
Samsung said the launch of the Galaxy Note 8.0
will "reignite the mid-size tablet category" -- a
segment increasingly crowded by rival products
including the iPad mini that launched last
November and Google's seven-inch Nexus
7.
Samsung and Apple accounted for more than half
of all smartphone sales in the final quarter of
2012 -- 29.0 percent for Samsung and 22.1
percent for Apple -- according to research firm
Strategy Analytics.
No comments:
Post a Comment