Panasonic developing enterprise-grade tablet

by Hugo Jobling on 16 June 2011, 16:26

Tags: Panasonic (TYO:6752)

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Tough sell

Panasonic is well known for its range of rugged Toughbook laptops and tablet PCs, so it should come as no surprise to learn that the company plans to bring a similarly-tough Android-based tablet out, too.

According to Panasonic Solutions Company presided, Rance Poehler: "The vast majority of tablet devices - regardless of the OS - are engineered for consumers and don't offer appropriate levels of security and durability or the functionality needed for business use. Like all Toughbook products, our Toughbook tablet will be designed and constructed with the mission-critical mobile user in mind."

The Toughbook tablet will feature a 10.1in, XGA (1,024 x 768 pixel) display, which will be daylight-viewable, unlike the glossy screens used by many other tablets. Specs other than that aren't forthcoming at the moment, although Panasonic does say that the Toughbook tablet will offer Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G connectivity; in addition to GPS.

To make its rugged tablet fit for use in the workplace, Panasonic promises "full-shift" battery life and hardware-level security. The version of Android to be used hasn't been specified yet, but the images made available by Panasonic indicate that it will be a 2.x-based system, instead of using the newer, tablet-orientated 3.1 'Honeycomb' version of Google's OS.

No pricing is available yet, but given the enterprise-grade build, and target market, the Toughbook tablet is unlikely to be cheap when it does reach the market.



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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I wonder if Jake Humphrey will be carrying this around with him next year instead of that crappy ipad.

Panasonic… interesting name to be jumping into the tablet war. I wonder what their software support will be like.
Damn good idea/
at $MEGACORP our lads carry round little acer pda for timesheeting, customer signatures, and ordering spares. Something this size would be far easier to use, would allow us to stick the manuals and parts list on the thing too.
Brewster0101
Panasonic… interesting name to be jumping into the tablet war. I wonder what their software support will be like.
They do have a good pedigree in the corporate sector with their Toughbooks, if this is by the same team, I can imagine that this will be a very well made tablet.
How on earth is enterprise an “untapped market segment” for tablet makers?

Many large corporations are falling over themselves to buy iPads!
Mattus
How on earth is enterprise an “untapped market segment” for tablet makers?

Many large corporations are falling over themselves to buy iPads!

Don't get me started about this. To have the latest iFad executives are telling IT departments what IT equipment to procure and deploy.
At a friends place of work, the CEO got an iPad and as soon as the iPad 2 came out made the IT dept's lives a living nightmare until they got him an iPad 2. Good no them for refusing to pay extortionate ebay prices and made the impatient bugger wait until the apple store delivered it at the RRP, 3 weeks later.
That same executive refuses to spend the time to learn how to use certain apps such as the slingbox paeyer and keeps wasting their time calling in support calls at teh weekend because he's got all confused and changed the settings rather than the channel.