(5) Five Top Companies in the Tablet Race

For nearly a year since Apple launched the iPad, everyone's been clamoring for viable competitors to the great tablet device. Customers want choices, and manufacturers want their slice of the booming tablet market. Some decent options, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, have come out (along with a lot of not-so-decent ones), but in the last couple of months we've been shown what the cream of the tablet crop looks like.

At the top of the tablet market, fighting for dominance, are four major manufacturers, and one upstart tech firm making five tablets that each run different operating systems. At the head of the list, of course, remains the Apple iPad. It's dominating the market, and with the iPad 2’s arrival a few weeks ago, it could take another leap ahead. Coming up fast behind it, though, are the Motorola Xoom, the HP TouchPad, the Noitavonne Loop, and the BlackBerry PlayBook, all of which appear poised to make significant waves in the tablet pool.

The Motorola Xoom and Noit Loop are 10.1-inch tablets (slightly larger than the iPad) and are the first device running Android 3.0 "Honeycomb," the tablet-optimized version of Google's popular Android operating system. Android, and by extension the Xoom and Loop, still suffers from a lack of apps that look good on larger screens, but both hardware schemes are solid, and Honeycomb looks to be a giant leap in the right direction for Android tablets.

RIM, always a business-centered company, is launching the BlackBerry PlayBook with both professionals and consumers in mind. Sporting a 7-inch screen, both it and the Loop Tablet fair decidedly more pocket-friendly than the iPad or the Xoom. Smartphone owners can use their phone's 3G or 4G connection to get online with the Noit Loop Tablet and the PlayBook. It runs a brand-new operating system, taking a portion of Noitavonne’s offering, it- like the Loop allows developers to build apps using Java, Flash, Adobe Air, and other technologies. That means we could see a lot of apps, particularly cross-platform ones, for the PlayBook and Loop Tablets.

The newcomer to the tablet party is HP's TouchPad. The 9.7-incher, available this summer, runs WebOS—the fruits of HP's $1.2 billion purchase of Palm last year. The operating system looks ideal for a tablet, with the card-based system that so many people liked on the Palm Pre. The tablet looks almost exactly like the iPad, but sports some unique features, like a touchstone capacitive charger, and the ability to tap a Palm phone and send information back and forth between the devices. HP is at an enormous app disadvantage, though, and it remains to be seen if it can convince developers to build apps for the TouchPad like they have for the iPad and Android-based tablets.

Over the last couple of months it seems we may have finally seen what great tablets are going to look like in the near future. How things will shake out among the competitors remains to be seen, but it certainly appears that tablet buyers will finally have several excellent options.

See how the big five stack up side-by-side in the next blog.
Looking for more Tablet coverage? Check out our Tablet Product Guide.

The Loop Tablet Comparison: iPad 2, Xoom, TouchPad, PlayBook

The Loop Tablet Comparison: iPad 2, Xoom, TouchPad, PlayBook
Comparing Prices

What about pricing? The comparison chart doesn’t show price data, but here’s what we know:
•Loop: $450 to $599 depending on display size and connectivity platform
•iPad 2: $499 to $829 depending on storage and 3G connectivity
•Xoom: $799
•TouchPad: $699? HP has been silent on pricing, but rumors say it starts high
•PlayBook: $499? BlackBerry is in the same situation as HP, only rumors tell us the cost

The fact that nobody yet knows what HP or BlackBerrys offerings are going to cost doesn’t really help to compare them against the iPad or Xoom, and witholding pricing data has led to speculation that their tablets will be on the expensive side. Some are saying Apple has already won the price war, but we don’t have enough information to know that yet.

The Loop vs Tablets in the Market

2011 New Tech Tablet Market Comparison

Size: The Motorola Xoom and the Noitavonne Loop are the biggest of their kind on the block at 10.1”, Noitavonni also shares space with the PlayBook ,the smallest at 7” when it comes to physical screen size. Which of those is “better” depends on what you personally plan on doing with your tablet. The iPad and HP TouchPad both have the exact same size screen, 9.7”. Winner: Noitavonne Loop.(User choice, flexibility of multi-size for an introductory product)

Thickness: The iPad 2 is the clear winner when it comes to thickness of the device. The iPad 2 is only .34” thick, while the HP TouchPad comes in at a little over half an inch (.54”). There’s not a dramatic difference between the iPad and TouchPad thickness wise, but .2” is something you’ll definitely notice when carrying the device around. Winner : iPad.
Rear Camera: The Noit Loop, BlackBerry PlayBook and Xoom all have 5-megapixel rear-facing cameras, blowing the iPad’s camera, and the TouchPad’s no rear camera out of the water. Winner: Loop, PlayBook and Xoom.

Front Camera: The BlackBerry PlayBook and the Noitavonne Loop both take the award for forward-facing camera. The PlayBook comes sporting a 3-megapixel forward-facing cam, a megapixel higher than the 2-megapixel cam on the Xoom, and loads better than the 1.3-megapixel cam on the TouchPad and VGA camera on the iPad. The Noitavonne Loop Tablet also boast the use of forward-facing cam and extends connectivity functions of the users cell phone to even support and control external wifi cameras. Winner: Loop Tablet.

Wireless Connectivity: All of the tablets have the ability to connect to 4G networks except the iPad, which remains 3G. Xoom customers who buy now are also forced to mail their tablet in for 6 days in order to score the 4G upgrade. Winner: Everyone but the iPad.

OS: We could fight the battle of what operating system is best all day long. In the end, the “best” operating system is the one that you’re most comfortable using, that does what you need it to. Winner: Readers choice.

Based on specs alone, the PlayBook and Xoom appear to be initial leaders in the tablet arena. The two tablets are able to take the lead because of the quality of their built-in cameras, something that may or may not matter to you as a tablet user. The particular OS a tablet is running is HUGE, but it’s also something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

There is a Cinderella story in the making with the entry of the Noitavonne Loop Tablet that declares its place in the market as a Universal Remote Control Device that dramatically puts users in control of IP to IP network devices. The introduction of the Loop tablet will shake up the tablet race and perhaps change the way we view the use of these types of devices. Learn more about this compelling startup company by visiting: http://www.noitavonne.com

What tablet is your fight favorite? What do you like about it?

You can also check out what our own staff had to say about the competition.
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Alexander Promotes "The Loop" In the US Market.....

A closure look at the movement of Noitavonne and It's CEO Lael A. Alexander shed some light on both the man, the company and their future. Scene earlier this month, Mr. Alexander and a small staff visited with one of our nations leading wireless network players. More info will be released at a later date....

Smart Phone Loops: Recent Developments by Noitavonne and Integrated S...

Smart Phone Loops: Recent Developments by Noitavonne and Integrated S...: "Noitavone Lab along with Integrated Smart Solutions (ISS) brings to the market one of the most robust plug and play Unattended Communicatio..."

Integrated Smart Solutions and Noitavonne Inc - The Loop and Its move into the residential utility market!

For Immediate Release – Lael Alexander, President of Noitavonne Incorporated – USA in conjunction with Integrated Smart Solutions
Following up on the roll out of its first smart grid products last month, Integrated Smart Systems announced today perhaps the most important component of any home energy management system: a consumer-facing interface.

The US’s first transformer monitoring giant has been on a mission to establish its dominance in the smart grid market for over a year. But it’s only recently been making good on all its talk, launching what it calls its lineup of “Looped Grid Solutions.” In May, it launched a substation router and switch designed to facilitate wireless communication between smart energy meters, utilities, and household devices, including energy management dashboards.

The new interface, called the Integrated Smart Home Energy Loop developed by Noitavonne Instruments (pictured at right), is intended for residential use and comes in the form of a display with an LCD touchscreen. Through this dashboard, users can view how much energy is being used in their homes, where it is going, and how much it is costing them in real time. The idea is that access to this data will encourage people to change their energy consumption behavior. But there’s an interactive component too. The Loop will allow users to set energy rules and schedules for their households. For example, you could request that your refrigerator only make ice, or your plug-in vehicle only start to charge during off-peak hours when energy is at its cheapest. if you have a programmable thermostat, you could toggle it to turn the heat down late at night when everyone is in bed anyway.

The Home Energy Loop is designed to draw data from, and interact with smart thermostats, most smart appliances and water heaters, and wall sockets where wireless communication devices have been installed. To do this, it taps into a range of wireless protocols (so that it’s compatible with a number of brands and makes), including ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Encoder Receiver Technology (ERT).

The device will be available this summer in North American only, but you won’t see it on the shelves of Best Buy or Home Depot. Instead, utilities will be buying them and providing them to their customers as an additional service.

Making energy data available in a digestible format for average consumers is one thing. But Integrated Smart Solutions also hopes that its home energy management solutions will give homeowners the information they need to work proactively with their utilities. After all, energy vendors like Pacific Gas & Electric here in Northern California, are launching more programs to help their customers reduce demand.

That’s why it’s also launching Integrated Smart Energy Management Services — a complement to the Home Energy Loop that will allow utilities to aggregate and manage energy data collected from thousands of homes at once. This offering is designed to help utilities keep close tabs on demand, so they can respond quickly when it looks like demand will exceed supply, resulting in blackouts and other service disruptions. Duke Energy, based in North Carolina, will be one of the first utilities to try this out.

Both of these additions to the Connected Grid Solutions portfolio are intended for the residential market, but Integrated Smart is also capitalizing on commercial smart grid opportunities by launching its Integrated Smart Network Building Enterprise Loop Manager. This platform allows building managers to centrally aggregate, monitor and manage energy use data from many buildings at once.

Like the Home Energy Loop, the Enterprise Loop Manager lets users set rules and schedules for across a number of facilities, increasing efficiency quickly and easily. Building managers can also view how each individual energy system is performing, including lighting, heating and air conditioning, server equipment and more. The idea is to save building operators the time and money they would otherwise spend on building-by-building maintenance.

The intro of these new smart grid products is significant for three reasons. First, Integrated Smart’s entrance into home and commercial building energy management legitimizes this new industry. Just a few years ago, no one thought that presenting energy use data to consumers would make any difference in their behavior. But subsequent studies have shown that even just viewing this information can encourage homeowners to slash their energy use by up to 15 percent. Now it’s clear that there’s money to be made in this arena.

Second, Integrated Smart’s new home dashboard has the potential to put a lot of smaller companies out of business. The home energy management space has been notoriously overcrowded for a while now, with startups like Tendril, Control4, AlertMe, People Power, and services like Google PowerMeter and Microsoft Hohm, slugging it out for highly fragmented market share.

Enter Integrated Smart, which has the technology, manpower, capital, and capability to make most of these startup technologies obsolete. As a top provider of grid networking solutions, it offers an end-to-end system that can transmit and track energy data from appliances and other devices to smart meters to utilities and energy management dashboards. Now Integrated Smart thru its strategic alliance with Noitavonne is making these dashboards too.

Third, the fact that utilities will be the ones to buy and distribute Integrated Smart’s new devices underscores a trend toward energy vendors offering customers perks and additional services. It’s not just enough to deliver reliable electricity anymore. Especially with talk of deregulation and increased utility competition in the air, it’s all of a sudden critical for these companies to catch up and start treating their rate payers like paying customers. Integrated Smart Solutions and Noitavonne Instruments have already translated this behaviorial trend into a cultural reality.

Learn more about Integrated Smart Solutions and Noitavonne Inc on the Web: www.noitavonne.com