Lenovo launches first LePad tablet to Chinese market

Vendor aims to fight Apple with multiple models

Lenovo has begun selling its first LePad tablet exclusively in China, and plans to start selling the device, and a separate business version, in the rest of the world this year.

The LePad is a 10.1in tablet running Android 2.2 and powered by a 1.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It is available in 16GB and 32GB versions with Wi-Fi or 3G and prices start at $533.

"Like personal computers, different users will have different demands for tablet computers," Chen Xudong, vice president of Lenovo, told China Daily.

Producing multiple tablet models is key to beating Apple, he said, which has less of a retail presence in China and is suffering supply problems after the Japanese earthquake.

Xudong explained that Lenovo will make the initial tablet available in the rest of the world by June, and a second tablet aimed at the enterprise user by the third quarter. The device will have up to 8,000 applications available by the end of the year, he claimed.

Xudong predicted that Lenovo will have 30 per cent of the Chinese tablet market in the next two to three years, and will expand further into the sector globally.