Lenovo Android LePad set to dominate ‘non’ iPad Tablet Market?

The Lenovo LePad Android Tablet looks like it could give it’s Tablet PC competitors a real run for the money as the form factor starts to take hold. With pundits praising them, journalists and tech gurus writing odes to them, and media companies heralding a new day, the Tablet PC could cause another computing paradigm shift and like NetBooks, change the way we think about how we access our information.

Tablet PCs are here to stay and they’re only going to get better. Lenovo is working to lead the way in the Tablet PC space and will soon release its LePad Android Tablet computer. If this is anywhere near as good as the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid we saw at CES in January Lenovo will have a winner on it’s hands

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), a global research firm based in Massachusetts, tablet computer sales are expected to grow by 60 percent in the next four years. Lenovo is leading the PC-pack in getting a solidly built and capable tablet to the market, so it’s likely to capitalize on these projections early on.

To be outfitted with an Android operating system, the new LePads will likely first be sold and marketed in China and other Asian and developing markets, thanks in large part to Apple’s notorious avoidance of those regions. Lenovo’s chairman, Liu Chuanzhi, recently said that he worried about Apple breaking into the Chinese tablet market, so the move is likely a step toward stemming that company’s current market dominance.

Lenovo generated much excitement with its recent announcement of the LePhone smartphone and the company recently said that it would commit nearly 20 percent of its entire resources toward the development of new and cutting-edge mobile devices. The recent news about the LePad’s release seems to back that up.

Some have wondered about the company’s ability to issue a tablet computer on such short notice, but they shouldn’t worry. Design and build details will likely come from the previously shelved Lenovo U1 Hybrid – a laptop which featured a removable and completely independent tablet display with a Snapdragon processor and the now obsolete Skylight operating system, which Lenovo dropped in favor of the more able and popular Android system.

The tablet will likely come in some form of the U1 Hybrid’s 10.1-inch removable display, and will probably be equipped with a beefier processor – the rumor mill is rife with speculation about a Qualcomm dual-core processor – and an NVIDIA Tegra 250 graphics card. That could be a strong performance combination.

There are no specifics about release dates, but many sources say that the LePad should see distribution by late 2010, potentially making it the hottest Christmas present in town.