With everybody and their kid brother expected to launch an Android powered tablet soon, how do you make your product stand out from the crowd? If you’re Motorola, the answer may be to bundle your 10 inch tablet with Verizon’s service. And I don’t just mean 3G mobile broadband, but also Verizon’s FiOS digital TV service.
The Financial Times is reporting that Motorola and Verizon could co-launch their 10 inch Android tablet as soon as this fall, and that it will work with FiOS service in some capacity. Motorola also makes the set-top boxes that Verizon FiOS customers use.
It’s not entirely clear from the article whether that means you’ll be able to watch FiOS videos on the go, or just stream content from your home DVR to your tablet over a home network. Or maybe it’ll just work like a big remote control and program guide. I can imagine a lot of different ways that an Android Tablet could be used as part of a home theater setup.
The Financial Times also confirms some of the things we’ve been hearing about Motorola’s upcoming tablet for a while, including the fact that it will have two cameras and support Adobe Flash (which means it will run Google Android 2.2 or 3.0 at launch). It will also reportedly be thinner and lighter than the iPad, which measures 9.6″ x 7.5″ x 0.5″ and weighs about 1.5 to 1.6 pounds.
I hope “thinner” and “lighter” doesn’t translate into “less powerful”. The first big name Android tablets need to target iPad performance more than iPad price.