Lenovo LePad may not alter prospects of Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab

Lenovo is expected to enter the fray of an already conquered tablet PC market by Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab.

The tablet from Lenovo is coming out one year after iPad’s launch at the 2010 CES (Consumer Electronics show). Interestingly, Lenovo’s tablet is expected to feature in 2011 CES, which will be held in Las Vegas between Jan. 6 and 9.

While more details of the product will appear in the CES show, apparently, Lenovo plans to release different tablet PCs in different sizes and varying prices. The pricing point may probably be true as Nick Reynolds, director of global marketing of the product group at Lenovo said Lenovo tablets are mainly aimed at consumers looking for products with multiple price tags.

But one of the tablet PC similar to Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab is expected to be Lenovo LePad, which is targeted to compete with already existing tablets in the market.

The LePad from Lenovo is an Android-based slate which was announced in July 2010. The tablet from Lenovo is expected to ship in both 7-inch and 10.1-inch versions.

LePad Slate tablet features 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen display compared to Apple iPad which features 9.7-inch display and Galaxy Tab of 7-inch.

LePad is expected to run on Google Android 2.2, but the delay may force Lenovo to rethink their option for Goolge’s upcoming Honeycomb OS platform. The LePad tablet is expected to have the Snapdragon, NVIDIA Tegra 2 or Qualcomm processor with 1 GHz speed when it reaches production level, but as of now pointers are that Snapdragon is the most preferred option.

The tablet may also feature a 16GB flash drive and 512MB of RAM.

The LePad is expected to weigh close to Apple iPad which is around 1.5 pounds, with front and rear cameras, a HDMI and a mini USB ports along with a headphone jack.

Apart from having similar features as Samsung Galaxy Tab and Apple iPad, Lenovo's LePad will have some additional and obviously different features to attract the market attention.

“Slates, netbooks are quite similar in terms of consumer usage habits and the consumption of media,” says Reynolds. But the tablets could impact netbook sales.