There are phoney wars and, in the iPad’s case, smart-phoney ones, where rival tablets resemble supersized phones and have failed to fight Apple head-on with an interface or screen size to match the pioneering device.
But hostilities are now officially under way, with the launch yesterday of Motorola’s Xoom – the first tablet to use Google’s “Honeycomb” Android 3.0 operating system and interface. It has been specifically designed for a much larger screen than the smartphones on which Android has been successfully challenging the iPhone.
The Xoom, available initially in the US through Verizon Wireless, will be followed swiftly by similar tablets that have been waiting on Honeycomb before launching.