There is a new tablet on the market and it is attempting to compete with Apple's iPad. The new Xiaomi Mi Pad may be cheaper than the iPad, but questions over which tablet is better continues to be a point of debate for many in the tech world as the competition for the tablet market heats up.
While Apple has long accused Samsung of copying its products, China's Xiaomi may have trumped the copycat angle with its own tablet that has many analysts and observers saying the new device is almost an exact duplicate of the Apple iPad mini.
The Chinese company unveiled [video] its first table in Beijing and the product description reads almost exactly as the iPad mini does. It has a 7.9 inch screen and a high resolution of 2,048 x 1,536. Based on reports, Xiaomi is employing an Android-based UI that is very similar to Apple's iOS 7.
Xiaomi says the new table, in announcing the launch [in Chinese], has "a 2.2GHz Tegra K1 processor running a new version of MIUI."
It will also have the "Microsoft Office suite [that] promises Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications with support for Dropbox and other cloud services for easy syncing across devices."
That could go a long way for users who want tablets to have word processing and work-related applications ready to use. As more and more users aim to have the smaller tablets as their primary computing device, having multiple features like Office could be a boost for the Chinese company making its way into the mainstream battle for the best tech.
However, by focusing much of their efforts on a device that is similar to Apple, it could lead to patent and copyright issues. Ultimately, it could affect where and how the new tablet is being sold. Currently, the Chinese market is ripe for the tablet, but getting it into international markets could prove difficult.
The new Mi Pad tablet will officially go on sale in China next month, with the 16 GB version running a small $240 and the larger 64 GB model going for only $272. That price tag will undoubtedly make it a competitor on the Chinese market, as lowering the cost, but maintaining much of the expected tablet features, should help Xiaomi compete and even dominate the local billion-person market.
