ASUS Confirms Win8 ARM Tablet, 3G Transformer in March & New 10″ Tablet

By Nicole Scott
7 Jan, 2012 2:52 pm

57 Comments

ASUS couldn’t wait for CES to talk about what’s coming up in their 2012 tablet line up. At a press event in Taipei the ASUS tablet road map was laid out by Vice President and General Manager of the Eee Systems Business Unit, Samson Hu.

We’ve already heard that there will be a ARM tablet running Windows 8 and speculation has been that it will be the Transformer Prime.  We now have confirmation that ASUS will indeed be launching a ARM tablet running Windows 8 that will arrive by the end of the year. However, with a release date slotted for a possible 11 months away, it doesn’t seem likely that they would use a 2011 design even if it just day’s away from being 2012.

There is a good news for Transformer Prime fans though, so if you were holding off for the 3G version, you’ll be happy to hear that it now has an official March release date.  This new variant of the Transformer Prime will also come equipped with a more powerful GPS module.  This is a welcome news since the Transformer Prime has been receiving some negative reviews around the weak performance of the GPS.

For CES we are expecting the roll out of a 7 inch tablet, which is most likely the ASUS Memo, as well as a new 10 inch tablet with a high screen resolution.  We are unclear whether Hu meant that this was a completely new tablet or the ASUS Transformer Prime with 3G and a better screen resolution.  We only have a few days to wait to uncover the details of this announcement.

Last but not least, two more 10 inch tablets were announced for the 2nd half of 2012, sadly there were no additional details.

ASUS provided their projections for 2012 tablet sales with a expectation sitting around 6 million tablets.  To achieve this they are beefing up their Android Tablet division from 300 to 400 employees. If you think that they are putting all their eggs into one basket, you must be wrong, as they’ve got 150 developers and engineers working on just the new Windows 8 tablets. Clearly ASUS is ramping up to be a big player in the 2012 tablet ecosystem.

Via NetbookNews.de