Tablet News: Sony Plans iPad Competitor, JooJoo to Get App Store

Even though the Apple iPad was not the first tablet computer to be announced in recent months, it is the most anticipated. Now other companies are scrambling to get attention in a tablet market that has been completely overshadowed by the iPad.

At a recent Tokyo news conference to announce Sony's quarterly financial results, Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda announced that Sony plans to make a tablet to compete with the Apple iPad.

"That is a market we are also very interested in. We are confident we have the skills to create a product," Oneda said. "Time-wise we are a little behind the iPad, but it's a space we would like to be an active player in."

Oneda had no further details to give about the Sony tablet, although he made it clear that Sony's tablet wasn't intended to replace the company's 3G-connected e-book reader. "The [Sony Reader] Daily Edition with 3G network connectivity has received great acclaim and we plan to expand sales going forward."

Another tablet maker, Fusion Garage, which announced its tablet long before the iPad, has reached a critical milestone. Fusion Garage announced that its JooJoo tablet was entering full production, meaning the company will likely reach its goal of shipping JooJoos 8-10 weeks after taking pre-orders.

Fusion Garage also announced plans to create an online app store for the device. Fusion Garage CEO, Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, has acknowledged the main advantage the iPad has over the JooJoo is Apple's App Store. By creating one for the JooJoo, Fusion Garage aims to eliminate that advantage.

The Fusion Garage app store will operate differently, though. The company plans to find Web apps from all over the Internet and categorize them in one place that users can easily search. This approach will work well because the JooJoo is designed to use Web apps instead of apps downloaded to the device.

That doesn't mean JooJoo-specific apps are out of the question. Fusion Garage is also giving out application programming interfaces (API) to developers, which will allow them to create apps designed specifically to take advantage of JooJoo hardware.

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