Viewsonic toys with the idea of Meego on 8in or 9in tablets

DISPLAY AND TABLET MAKER Viewsonic has hinted that it might look at offering tablets in 8in or 9in screen sizes in the future, as well as devices running Intel's Meego operating system.

During a demonstration of the firm's Viewpad 7x tablet, the first of its kind on the market to support Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb, product marketing manager Derek Wright told The INQUIRER that an 8in or 9in model is "not out of the question", given the firm's desire to offer as much choice as possible.

While the Viewpad 7x supports Android, Viewsonic also sells Windows 7 tablets, such as the Viewpad 10, claiming that there are still major doubts in the enterprise market about Android's security credentials.

As to whether the future for the firm lies primarily with Windows and its supposedly more tablet-friendly Windows 8 operating system or Android, Viewsonic is keeping its options open.

The hardware maker would even look at Meego if it delivers on user interface and other expectations, he indicated.

Despite the loss of its partner Nokia, Intel is still plugging away with the open source operating system Meego, and said yesterday that it is "confident of the ecosystem" around Meego.

Yet despite a high profile Meego-based Asus Eee PC launch, it has so far remained something of a side player in the operating system competition, with Microsoft's Windows 8 and Google's Android Honeycomb having dominated all the tablet and smartphone talk at Computex this week. µ