Reports have been rampant the past few weeks that Avaya was going to introduce a tablet device. This week marked the official unveiling of the new Avaya tablet. Avaya has lovingly named this new tablet the “Flare.”
What does the Flare bring to the table that existing tablets are lacking? The Flare starts out with an 11.6-inch HD touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HD video camera, and Harman Kardon speakers. The Flare goes even further by including an Ethernet jack, two USB ports, and support for 3G/4G broadband cards.
Avaya’s Flare will also come rocking the Avaya unified communications software. This will allow users to seamlessly integrate with their existing Avaya devices and services.
Here is where things start getting tricky. The Flare comes built on the Android OS. This will allow users to pull apps from the Avaya market, but also opens up the world of Android apps on the Android Marketplace as well. This also speeds up application development with an abundance of development tools.
Avaya has stated that the Flare User Experience software just might find its way to other devices as well. Most notable in this will be the Apple iPad and iPhone. Keep in mind that Avaya has supported these devices in the past with their one-X mobile client.
The question on all of this fancy new hardware is pricing. Avaya has announced that this new hardware will come in at around $2,000. Let that sink in for just a moment. The iPad retails for a fraction of that price. Cisco has hinted their tablet will retail for under $1,000. Laptops can be had for even less than all of these devices. Has Avaya priced themselves out of the market before dipping their feet into the pool?
It might be great to see Avaya embracing the tablet market, but they have essentially made an overpriced laptop. Unless Avaya drops support for any device other than the Flare, it will be hard to see this becoming a success. Designing the software around Android means the Flare User Experience easily ports to other devices running Android. Time will tell if Avaya succeeds with this new hardware.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 17th, 2010 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
