Samsung hints at a tablet announcement

TEASING THE WORLD with photos on its Facebook page, Samsung is hinting at a tablet announcement at the Unpacked 2011 event being held in Barcelona next week.

With an extreme close up shot of what appears to be part of a device the photos have the words, "What's your tab life? 78910." Last year Samsung revealed its Galaxy Tab with its 7-inch display and at Mobile World Congress last month it announced the 10.1-inch version that runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

When it announced its 7-inch tablet Samsung said it would launch a family of tablets in 2011. The descriptions indicated that Samsung sees tablets ranging in size from a large smartphone up to notebook-like dimensions. Then in September 2010 a salesman's gaffe revealed that Samsung was developing a 10-inch tablet.

Samsung told The INQUIRER, "It's a teaser, an announcement is following, we can't say anything now."

Despite shipping millions of Galaxy Tabs to retailers in December and January, the company has had to admit that its sales have not been great. Not on the scale of the Ipad, anyway.

Steve Jobs said that 7-inch display tablets would be dead-on-arrival because that is what Apple's marketing research had found. Despite that various tablets ranging in size from 5-inch and upwards in display terms have been announced by other firms.

Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy Tab announcement could be about an 8.9-inch version, which seems like a odd size for a small form factor, or something else, perhaps two new tablets with 8-inch and 9-inch displays, only Samsung knows. µ