Lenovo Enters Indian Tablet Market

Lenovo has entered the Indian tablet market today by launching two products and announcing a third tablet that will hit the market in the coming months. Both the new tablets- 'IdeaPad tablet K1' and the 'ThinkPad tablet' run on the Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) operating system while the 'IdeaPad tablet A1' runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS. Both the ThinkPad and the IdeaPad K1 will hit the market by the end of October, 2011.

"Tablets are extremely personal technology devices used primarily for data consumption. Whether it is IdeaPad for entertainment or ThinkPad for business, we are delivering Android tablets designed to meet the customer needs," said Amar Babu, MD, Lenovo India.

IdeaPad K1

The tablet has a 10.1 inch high definition (1280x800 pixel resolution) multi-touch touchscreen display and runs on the latest Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) OS. It is powered by a 1.0 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor and has 1GB of RAM. The graphics have been provided by NVIDIA (Tegra 2 T20 GeForce ULP 256kB) and there is an option of choosing between 16, 32 and 64GB of internal storage which can be further increased up to 64GB with a microSD card.

The tablet also comes with a 2 mega pixel front facing camera and a 5 mega pixel rear camera with video recording capabilities. On the connectivity front the tablet has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G (in the high-end model). It also comes with a microSD port and a mini-HDMI port.

Lenovo claims that the tablet will provide up to 10 hours of battery life and users can choose between a range of colours including white, black and red. Additionally, the company is offering 2GB of cloud storage for the users free of cost.

The dimensions of the device are 264mm x 189mm x 13.3mm and its weight is 750 grams. The price of the 32GB Wi-Fi only tablet is Rs 29,990 while the price of the 32GB Wi-Fi+3G tablet is Rs 33,990.

ThinkPad

The ThinkPad is basically an enterprise tablet designed for mobile business professionals. It comes with easy and secure e-mail access and Cisco VPN support control device security with active directory password, Microsoft ActiveSync integration and encrypted user data.

The tablet has a 10.1 inch (1280x800 pixel resolution) Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display (TFT LCD) touchscreen with support for ThinkPad tablet pen input. It also runs on the Android 3.1 OS and has a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core ARM processor. The device has 1GB of RAM and like the IdeaPad K1; it also offers 16, 32 and 64GB of internal memory (although it is not expandable).

The tablet also comes with a 2 mega pixel front facing camera and a 5 mega pixel rear camera with video recording capabilities. On the connectivity front the tablet has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G (in the high-end model) and it also comes with a mini HDMI port, a micro USB port and a USB 2.0 port. Additionally, it also has a SIM card slot and a media card reader. The tablet has a 3250mAh battery which the company claims will provide up to 9 hours of battery life.

The dimensions of the device are 260.4mm x 181.7mm x 14mm and its weight is 715 grams for the Wi-Fi model and 730 grams for the Wi-Fi+3G model. The price of the 16GB (Wi-Fi only) and the 32GB (Wi-Fi+3G) models are Rs 29,500 and Rs 41,900 while the costliest 64GB model with Wi-Fi+3G is available at Rs 46,900.

The company is also offering an optional keyboard Folio (0A36370) which basically works as a protective cover for the tablet and doubles up as a wired keyboard with an optical TrackPoint for better navigation.

IdeaPad A1

We had earlier written about the tablet when the company had first announced it. According to the official specifications of the tablet; it has a 7 inch (1024x600 pixel resolution) full high definition capacitive multi-touch touchscreen and runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system. It is powered by a 1.0GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor and comes with 512MB of RAM.

The device has up to 16GB of internal memory which can be further expanded up to 64GB with the help of a microSD card. It also has a 0.3 mega pixels front facing camera and a 3 mega pixels rear camera. On the connectivity front the tablet has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and it also comes with a micro USB port.

The dimensions of the device are 195mm x 125mm x 11.95mm and its weight is 400 grams. The company claims that the tablet will provide up to 5 hours of battery life. The tablet will also be launched in the coming months and the 16GB (Wi-Fi) model of the tablet will be priced at Rs 16,990.

The new tablets also come with a pre-loaded keyboard app called Go-Keyboard (since the original on-screen keyboard is not very good) and Lenovo has introduced two new features which are Social touch and Quick launcher.

While Social touch will act as a one stop for all the users social networking needs (Lenovo has integrated Facebook, Twitter etc. into it), the Quick launcher allows the users to put the most frequently used applications on the home screen for quick access to them.

With the launch of a mid-price range tablet, a high-price range tablet and an enterprise tablet, Lenovo aims to compete with both the best in the business (like Apple and Samsung) and the average ones too. Also, since consumers are still confused whether the 7 inch or the 10 inch screen size is the one to opt for, Lenovo has played it safe by launching a tablet in both the screen sizes.