Despite promises of a June release for the Asus Eee Pad range, powered by Honeycomb, the notebook makers have now revised the date, citing the CES announcement as a ‘mistake.’
The Taiwanese giant’s new generation of Eee Pad’s powered by Honeycomb, or Android 3.0, is now delayed as they get their head around its precise details, which they excitedly debuted to CES audiences just two weeks ago in Las Vegas.
The new trio, the Eee Pad MeMO, Transformer and the Slider earmarked for an Android 3.0 operating system, were first announced at the Computex show which was held in Taipei last June.
The tablet release is now to be held off until some time in the third quarter of 2011 and it is now likely to run on Android’s 2.3 Gingerbread system instead, according to John Swatton, from Asus’ Marketing division.
The new Pads, displayed at CES 2011, is the latest bid by Asus to gain some of the tablet market share gobbled up by the phenomenally popular Apple iPad, although precise details on the portable devices are still somewhat sketchy.
The 7.1 inch Eee Pad EMeMO, which doubles as a Smartphone, is said to include features including dual-cameras, 1080p video playback, and a micro HDMI port, running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
The new devices will also lack access to the Android marketplace, however, with Asus rumoured to be launching their very own apps store later this year, according to reports.
In order to compete with the iPad, Asus sought to strengthen the Eee Pad’s industrial design and collaborated with Google to adopt the Android platform, chairman Jonney Shih said earlier this year.
Motorola Mobility has already released its Android 3.0 tablet, the Xoom.