The 9.7-in. TouchPad coming on July 1 from Hewlett-Packard (HP) will be quickly followed by a 7-in. tablet from HP in August, according to a report.
Taiwan Economic News on Friday cited an unnamed subcontractor for Inventec Corp. , a PC maker in Taiwan, for information about the smaller tablet. The story said Inventec has "received big-ticket orders for tablet PCs from HP," for both the 9.7-in. TouchPad and a 7-in. model launching in August.
The announced TouchPad runs WebOS, but no other details were available on the 7-in. model.
Inventec and HP could not be reached for comment.
HP has not announced a 7-in. tablet, although that form factor is becoming fairly common alongside tablets with screens close to 10 inches in size.
The popular iPad has a 9.7-in. touchscreen, but the Samsung Galaxy Tab started with a 7-in. version, then moved to a 10.1-in. version and in March Samsung announced an 8.9-in. version.
The BlackBerry PlayBook also has a 7-in. touchscreen, while the Motorola Xoom has a 10.1 in. screen. The Cisco Cius will be 7 inches when it finally ships in July .
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com .
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