By 
Toshiba appears prepared to issue an announcement regarding a followup to the summer release of their first Honeycomb tablet, the Toshiba Thrive, and it could come next week at IFA. The new slate looks to improve on the shortcomings of their previous device, most notably with a svelte new look revealed in renders obtained by Notebook Italia. Featuring a thinner frame with brushed metal accents, little else is known about the new offering aside from the inclusion of microHDMI, microUSB, and microSD ports revealed in the leaked images.
Toshiba’s previous two attempts at entering the Android tablet space haven’t gone as successfully as they had hoped. The company would rather forget the poor performance of their initial Folio 100 and very well could be looking to erase the Thrive from their memory as well.
[via NotebookItalia]
Well that is certainly a good improvement.
forgoing the full size ports for micro HDMI/USB/SD? the fact that the Thrive is full size is probably the biggest selling points for me & other Thrive owners on thriveforums which swayed me to the Thrive instead of the Transformer. i don’t want to have to buy a micro-HDMI & adapter for my external hard drive. i don’t mind the bulk of the tablet–i’d rather it be sturdy in my hand than have to buy adapters for my (already owned) HDMI/USB cable(s) and my random SD cards laying around from my SLR’s to make them all fit into this new tablet. this is a step back for them if they only release it with micro ports.
make the price right at $250 or less and you’d sell millions. Price it at ipad prices and sell a couple. your play Toshiba.
“make the price right at $250 or less and you’d lose millions.”
FTFY
I see comments like this all the time and have to wonder what you guys are smoking, these people sell hardware to make money not to break even or lose money.
The android hardware market is a tough place, these makers get one sell and thats it while google takes all the cuts on app sales with no risk invested into hardware.
This is why the iphone and ipad are relatively cheap for being an Apple product. Apple will make decent profit from hardware but the real money is in the app store.
I am smoking nothing. Apple didn’t perfect the tablet market and price point, they perfected the _ipad_ market….and sure with their app store and all the rest of the garbage that comes with it.
You can’t compare the two devices directly but that’s what these companies do with their hardware and then proclaim the sales to be a failure or abandon the product, when in actuality it never had a chance. You can market the piss out of it, claim it creates anti-matter but no one will flinch if it isn’t at the right “disposable income” price. iDrones’ disposable income price is apparently higher and they will buy it whether they realize it has any purpose at all. [the ipad is a nice app launcher that has a lot of app support and hence a success, not hating on it]
Tablets are niche product, they really serve no purpose except to replace a book, pdf or magazine. Face it. Less capable than a laptop, less capable than a phone. I now have a $99 Touchpad and after using it for a week, I will tell you this is 100% the truf. Awkward to hold, tough to type on, etc. [touchpad really suffers from app support fer sure]
Take a marginal profit on the hardware and try to recoup the prices in applications or other products (ala apple)…..and enter AMAZON. They have this ability and hopefully they will capitalize. Everyone else is just throwing R&D, marketing and production dollars to the wind, IMO.
The front looks just like Motorola Xoom!! OMG!! Another law suit coming up!!
Serious though… don’t… I am not reading another patent law suit article -___-
Thats because it is. It’s pretty bad the morons here on the site get their Android devices wrong in articles wen it’s a site named exclusively after Android and for it’s followers !
Go away from Micro!!!! It was implemented for phones due to limited real estate for buttons. WTF is wrong with these manufacturers?
They still want to be thin.
If they want those tablets to sell drop the price, the way to go
Well for starters .. another poster somewhat caught it and thought i was a that it was a rip off design of the Xoom when the picture actually is the XOOM i mean WTF the Thrive has a camera /metal clip on the side or top when you hold it vertically !
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Toshiba+Thrive&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1280&bih=605&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
Hey Kevin Krause gt the pick of the XOOM down when it’s an article about the Toshiba Thrive