ASUS unveiled three new Android tablet devices, the Eee Pad MeMO, the Eee Pad Transfer and Eee Pad Slider, at CES 2011. The company indicated that all three would be powered by Google’s upcoming Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) operating system and would ship in Q2 2011 (April to June). It now appears that this may not be the case. In an interview with The Inquirer, ASUS marketing specialist John Swatton indicated that some “mistakes” were made at the CES announcement.
Swatton revealed that all three tablets will ship with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and that support for Android 3.0 was still undetermined given that ASUS did not have all the detailed technical specifications requirements for it.
The release date was also reported incorrectly. Swatton indicated that the tablets will ship in Q3, a quarter later than originally announced.
It also appears that these tablets may not have access to the Android Marketplace (as they will not have phone functionality). If so, ASUS would need to offer its own app store to support these. This also remains to be confirmed according to Swatton.
Not a great start to ASUS’s entry into the tablet market…