Toshiba, the company best known for its TV and its PC laptops, is finally throwing its hat into an already crowded tablet market. PC Magazine reports that Toshiba"s first tablet device, titled the Toshiba Thrive, will launch on July 10. The tablet will be available exclusively from Best Buy retail stores in the US at first. There"s no word on when the tablet will be sold at other retail outlets.
The Thrive tablet, like most of the non-Apple iPad tablets, is running a version of the Android operating system. There will apparently be three versions of the Thrive available for sale but all three will have a 10.1 inch display have will have Nvidia"s dual core Tegra 2 processor inside. It also has a 2 megapixel front facing camera and a 5 megapixel rear camera. It even has a replaceable battery, something the iPad doesn"t have.
The 8 GB version of the Thrive is priced at $429.99 while the 16 GB version of the Thrive comes in at $479.99. Finally the 32 GB Thrive is priced at $579.99. You can also get a year"s worth of support from Best Buy"s Geek Squad team for $99.99.
The Thrive will join a host of other tablets that have been launched in the past several months including the Motorola Xoom, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the RIM Blackberry Playbook and most recently the HP TouchPad. So far none of these tablets have come close to dethroning Apple"s iPad in terms of sales.