HP reportedly launching 7-inch tablet

Hewlett-Packard will reportedly unveil a 7-inch tablet in August following the July 1 debut of its 9.7-inch TouchPad.

HP has ordered 400,000 to 450,000 TouchPad tablets per month from supplier Inventec, says a story in Friday's Taiwan Economic News. Inventec will supply HP with the upcoming 9.7-inch TouchPad as well as the new 7-inch tablet.

An industry insider cited by Taiwan Economic News says that HP will order around 3 million tablets from Inventec this year.

Beyond the August kickoff date, no details were revealed about the 7-inch tablet. A request to HP for comment on the prospective tablet was not immediately returned.

HP will launch its 9.7-inch TouchPad in the U.S. this coming Friday. Priced at $499.99 for the 16GB and $599.99 for the 32GB model, the tablet will be sold through a variety of retailers, including Amazon.com, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Staples.

Running HP's WebOS and powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2GHz dual-CPU, the HP TouchPad will offer a 1024x768 display and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel webcam, along with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Cnet

10-inch BlackBerry PlayBook reportedly already seen live

First mention of a 10-inch BlackBerry PlayBook just this week has been quickly followed up by a sighting mentioned Friday. A reportedly credible traveller on a flight from Dallas to Toronto saw a device he said looked virtually identical to the seven-inch version but with a visibly better display. It was described to CrackBerry as unmistakable since it was using the same BlackBerry Tablet OS and was running Need For Speed, one of the bundled PlayBook games.

The rumor is unconfirmed but would line up with historical sightings. RIM employees have frequently been seen carrying pre-release devices on flights as engineers and executives fly back to Toronto and Waterloo from meetings with partners. For RIM, tablets are relatively new, but the launch of the PlayBook could mean staff are now comfortable carrying unreleased models.

A launch for the 10-inch PlayBook is rumored for the fall and would be a quick response to concerns that the current version is too small. RIM has claimed that the PlayBook can be an advantage for its pocketable size, but the it may be concerned that Steve Jobs was accurate about the problems associated with a seven-inch tablet. Its approach would follow that taken by Samsung, which tried out a seven-inch tablet at first but scaled up to larger sizes to hedge against customers preferring larger screens.

Electronista