CNY Predictions: Panda Pad & Tablet Tiger

Because we cover quite a bit of China tech news we feel entitled to make Chinese New Year predictions on top of our Western New Year predictions we made earlier in December when we declared 2010 the year of the tablet.. until Apple renames it. Which they did… 2010 is now the year of the iPad, and everybody’s getting on board, and the Chinese will be no exception as we pointed out in our CHiPAD article.

Now in preperation for the venerable upcoming CNY holiday we take our predictions a step further.

1.    A tablet-style device will be released in the year of the tiger called the Panda Pad and a competing product called the Tiger Tablet will also be released.
2.    Both products will look similarly enough like Apple’s iPad for major mainstream Western media to report on them, call them copy cat’s (in the tiger’s case) and do side by side comparisons to further use the iPad as a source for fanboy traffic-bait.
3.    They will run Android and Google will smirk quietly in the background.
4.    The eBook reader functions on both devices will be crap because of cheap screens being used but the Chinese won’t care because they will be able to download through their own app store a reader that lets them read Chinese authors stolen content for free. The China Written Works Copyright Society will rue not taking the ridiculously pitiful settlement Google had previously offered them.
5.    The CHiPads will include 2 USB ports, and WiFi as the Chinese government lift’s their restrictions on WiFi since its not a phone and not made by Apple. Giving them an unfair but very local advantage over Steve Jobs and his crew.
6.    China Hush will report a story where netizins are dismayed by a young female high school student who is attacked and beaten with the Panda Pad while her attackers film with the included web cam of the Tiger Tablet.

[Image Source]

Articles - Op-Ed