Google planning its own Nexus tablet

You didn’t really think Google was going to let Amazon hog all the Android tablet glory, did you? In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sea today, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said that the company planned to sell a tablet “in the next six months” that would be “of the highest quality.” Schmidt did not provide any further details of what would set the tablet apart from other Android tablets such as the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Google has experience releasing its own devices through its Nexus-branded series of smartphones. The latest such smartphone, Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, was the first to feature the Android 4.0 operating system, nicknamed “Ice Cream Sandwich.” The Galaxy Nexus also features a 4.65-inch HD display screen with 720p resolution, a 5MP camera that can shoot video at 1080p, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, and 1GB of RAM.

[ Stay ahead of advances in mobile technology with InfoWorld’s Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]

ANALYSIS: Android 4.0: A rundown of key features

Google released “Ice Cream Sandwich” this fall with the hopes of unifying the Android experience on smartphones and tablets alike. Fragmentation among different versions of the Android OS has long been a problem for Android application developers who have complained that they have no way of knowing whether the apps they design will work effectively across multiple platforms.

In addition to providing the same experience for users on both tablets and smartphones, the new operating system came with several new features including a lock screen that can unlock using facial recognition software; Android Beam, a new technology that lets users send contact information, directions, Web pages, and more though near-field communications (NFC) technology by tapping their phones together; and integration with the Google+ social network that lets users host online video chats among their circles of friends.

Research released by Gartner last month showed that Android has become by far the top smartphone operating system in the world, accounting for 52.5 percent of all smartphones sold in the third quarter of 2011. In all, consumers bought about 60.5 million Android smartphones in the third quarter this year, or roughly triple the 20.5 million Android smartphones purchased in the third quarter of 2010.

Read more about data center in Network World’s Data Center section.