Retailers who want to grab their share of the tablet craze, may take heart in new tablets due soon from Hewlett-Packard and Vizio—companies with strong retail roots, blogs NPD’s Ross Rubin.
Carriers have been grabbing most of the new big brand names in tablets including the Motorola Xoom due soon. But that might not bet the best channel for tablets.
Carriers haven’t been particularly successful in selling netbooks, notes Rubin.
Many tablet owners simply use WiFi, even when 3G is available. NPD’s research shows that most of tablet usage occurs in WiFi-capable settings like the home. Also Rubin says a large number of 3G enabled iPads have not been activated on AT&T’s network.
See Rubin’s blog here.
Note: HP tablets code named Topaz and Opal are expected to be announced Wednesday. They use the WebOS operating system developed by Palm.
Source: The NPD Group
