Patience is a virtue, it seems, at LG Electronics. The manufacturer says it’s in no rush to get an Android-powered tablet computer to market, even as Samsung, Dell, Research In Motion and others rush out tablets to compete with Apple’s runaway success, the iPad.
The South Korea-based LG had earlier said it planned to introduce a tablet by the end of 2010.
But an unnamed LG official told Reuters that the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system isn’t good enough for a tablet. “We plan to introduce a tablet that runs on the most reliable Android version … We are in talks with Google to decide on the most suitable version for our tablet, and that is not Froyo 2.2,” the news service reported the official as saying Monday.
Motorola Waiting, Too
LG isn’t the only company vowing that it will sell no tablet before its time.
The move follows a similar announcement by U.S.-based Motorola on Sept. 16. At the Deutsche Bank Technology investor’s conference, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said his company is looking for the right OS for its device.
“We want to make sure that any tablet that we deliver is competitive in the marketplace, and I think all of us will make sure that we will only deliver that when that occurs,” Jha said. “Hopefully, that’s early next year.” That device is likely to use Android 3.0.
Google itself has said that so far Android isn’t up to speed for tablets. In July, Hugo Barra, Google’s director of mobile products, told a tech blog that the Android Market for apps won’t be available on tablet devices that don’t run apps properly.
“Which devices do [run Market], and which don’t will be unit-specific, but Froyo is not optimized for use on tablets,” Barra said. “If you want Android Market on that platform, the apps…