Motorola Stings Tablet Foes with Pre-CES Honeycomb Buzz

There’s a lot of buzz in the air over Motorola’s impending contribution to the tablet space. And Motorola’s so sure it’s got a honey of a device, it created a viral video putting the sting on its competition ahead of CES 2011. Titled “Tablet Evolution,” the video pokes fun at iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tablet while giving viewers absolutely nothing in the way of concrete information about the Motorola device — not even its name — but drops a major hint in the way of a flying insect.

Take a look:

Don’t want to watch it? Here’s the summary: After some humorous anecdotes about famous tablets in history (“The Rosetta Stone: Multi-lingual support, but poor resolution,”) Motorola pulls out all the stops by poking fun at the iPad (“It’s like a giant iPhone, but … it’s like a giant iPhone,”) and the Samsung Galaxy tablet (“Android OS, but Android OS … for a phone.”). The video then zooms in on a black-shrouded tablet on a pedestal with a big red Motorola logo. A honeybee zooms in and lands on the logo. “CES 2011” shows up on the screen. End scene.

Bravo, Motorola, that’s a lot of hype. But what’s the real deal? What does “Android OS … for a phone” mean? It boils down to this: Android Honeycomb is the true tablet version of the Android OS, instead of the scaled-up versions of Android in the current lineup of tablets on the market. Like Apple with its iOS, Google has optimized Honeycomb for a larger screen environment. And now it’s a good bet Motorola’s device will be one of the first Honeycomb contenders.

And that’s it. But Motorola must be feeling really brave — or brazen — to poke fun at the tablet devices that have been essentially created the market. I hope Motorola pulls it off, but it has some big shoes to fill.

If Motorola truly does launch the “next-best-thing,” (MotoPad?) it may very well fill that niche for people who see the iPad as too much of a plaything. I hope Motorola does it, because with hype like this, even I’m interested in buying one.

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