It's obvious that tablet computers are making their mark on the electronics world, with Hewlett Packard this past week citing "the tablet effect" as a reason to consider a spinoff of its PC business. That's big. Especially as the company also said that it will cease production of its own tablet, the TouchPad, less than two months after it hit the shelves — effectively throwing in the towel in the battle with the iPad.
The global popularity of the iPad is undeniable, but not everyone is willing to give up the fight. A couple of new tablets released in Japan in August show that some hardware makers believe that smaller, more portable devices could be just what local consumers are looking for.
Earlier this month, Panasonic unveiled its weapon in the Japanese tablet wars with its UT-PB1 e-book reader — a 7-inch tablet running on Google's Android operating system. It has a dual-core CPU and 8 gigabytes of onboard storage, though that can be expanded with the use of microSD or microSDHC cards. It weighs just 400 grams (compared with the 600-gram, 9.7-inch iPad 2), making it light enough to hold pretty comfortably in one hand — something that may be the secret of any future success.