Acer Iconia tablets suffer launch confusion

ALTHOUGH The INQUIRER was told the Acer Iconia Tab W500 was suffering a delay of a few weeks, it turns out that Acer's Windows based tablet is now available from Laptops Direct and other online retailers.

The INQUIRER attended Acer's briefing for the tablets on 24 March where we were told the two the W500 and A500 tablets would be available from 8 April. However the A500 tablet running Android is already available from Dixons.

The A100 is a 7-inch tablet, which we were told at the briefing was due in May. This is still on course and it will cost around £300, but at The Gadget Show Live that The INQUIRER attended earlier this week, the A100 was still running Android 2.2 instead of Android 3.0.

The W500 tablet is Acer's hybrid device that can be docked onto a keyboard to turn it into a netbook, and it will cost around £530. Delays for tablets seem to be all too common at the moment, with various issues related to the release of Android Honeycomb and parts shortages.

The other question is whether, when these tablets finally arrive, they will prove any kind of match for leading devices such as Apple's Ipad 2, which saw long queues of consumers waiting to buy the device and then sold out in its first weekend in the UK.

The competition in tablets is fierce, especially in the Android market, with numerous manufacturers bringing out tablets with Google's operating system. Only time will reveal which will succeed and which will disappear into technology history. µ