The Galaxy Tab: Samsung has a hit on its hands

While Samsung’s Galaxy Tab isn’t as big a hit as Apple’s iPad, it has sold briskly and has reached the 1 million mark less than two months after its first release.

The Galaxy Tab, which made its debut in Europe on October 11 this year, is the first Android-based tablet to hit the market. Although its sales have been impressive, it has a long way to go to catch the iPad, which sold 1 million units in its first 28 days and has sold more than 7.5 million units this year.

The Galaxy Tab is designed more like a smartphone than an iPad-style tablet, since its seven-inch display screen is nearly three inches smaller than the iPad’s screen.The Galaxy Tab runs on the Android 2.2 (a.k.a., “Froyo”) operating system that Google has acknowledged is not optimized for tablet use.

Hugo Berra, Google’s director of mobile products, has said that applications downloaded from the Android Market onto Froyo-based tablets won’t run properly since Froyo is “is just not designed for that form factor.”

Google plans on releasing a tablet-centric version of Android early next year, although the company still has to release its Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”) platform later this year.

Although Google has set no firm date on when the tablet-centric Android platform will be released, it has been reported that Google and Verizon teaming up to create an Android-based tablet that will be specifically tailored for Verizon's network. Presumably, the Google-Verizon tablet will have a new version of Android when it is finally released.

Read more about software in Network World's Software section.

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