At a roundtable event this morning, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer admitted a Sony tablet would be launching this year, before announcing that they hope to be the number two player in tablets by the end of the year.
“We see the tablets coming out but we have to put a tablet on the marketplace that is competitive and differentiate it” Sir Howard said, before passing over to Sony’s Kuni Suzuki from the Networked Products & Services Group.
“Today, what is available? For sure, for everyone, the iPad is King of tablets. But what is the second? What is the third? So we’re going to be the second player in this year… We’d really like to take the number two position in a year”.
The discussion was centred around Android based tablets, with Sir Howard prefacing the discussion with the statement that their relationship with Google has been tied up to Internet Television. There wasn’t any more information about the tablet itself, but we can expect Sony to join the party within the next year.