ARM Predicts A Lot Of Tablets Coming This Year

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Although Microsoft has been trying to push the tablet format for 10 years, it takes Apple and the iPad to make the computer industry go crazy over the slate tablets. An ARM executive told ComputerWorld that he expects 50 new tablets to show up this year. ARM even had to rent out more space at the Computex show in Taiwan due to OEM demand for ARM chips.

ARM’s processors and processors based on their architecture is among the best for mobile devices, so it’s a no-brainer that ARM would be seeing a high-demand for their stuff with the tablet rush. Even the iPad’s processor, which Apple is marketing as their own “Apple A4″ is known to industry insiders as based on ARM architecture.

However, ARM’s Roy Chen, hinted that these 50 new tablets might be coming from unusual companies. He said that mobile phone service providers would be releasing the leading wave of tablets in Q2 of this year with lower-quality clones and other computer companies releasing them in Q3 of 2010.

Although Chen didn’t name which telcom companies are working on tablet devices, he said the top 10 telcoms in the world would be producing them this year. (The top 10 telcoms are currently China Mobile, Vodafone, O2, America Movil, Orange, Telenor, T-Mobile, TeliaSonera, China Unicom and Bharti Airtel)

Chen said there will be a lot of fragmentation in the tablet space regarding size of the screens until the market and the manufacturers, via demand, find out what size is the most desirable to the consumers.

At the same press conference in Taiwan where Mr. Chen spoke, ARM had two tablets on display that were running Android.