New details
have emerged about the tablet plans of Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Research
In Motion, if a price sheet, said to be a leaked road map from a big-box
retailer, is correct.
Pre Central
posted the road map March 14, and it shows the 10-inch Motorola Xoom going on
sale March 17 for $649, followed by the 7-inch RIM BlackBerry PlayBook March
27, for $499, $599 and $699, based on configurations.
Farther down
the line, however, it appears that HP's 9.7-inch TouchPad, which company
officials have so far only said will launch "this summer," is slated
for a June arrival, at $499 and $599, for a 16GB WiFi version and a 32GB
version, respectively.
Additionally,
it seems HP is also working on a 7-inch model—said to be code-named "Opal,"
according to Pre Central—that's slated for a September release.
Those details
match up with those that a source fed to Engadget in January, reporting
that HP was working on two tablets, a larger device code-named
"Topaz" and a smaller one called Opal, which would ship three months
later than its larger mate. The source also shared that the tablets would
likely offer induction-based charging, similar to the Palm Pre's Touchstone
charger, and a feature called Tap-to-Share, which lets users share a link, a
document or a song between devices by tapping them together. A "huge
amount" of cloud storage was also expected to be offered.
For more, read the eWEEK article: HP TouchPad Planned for June, 7-Inch Tablet in September: Report.
Hewlett-Packard 
