Huawei introduces MediaPad Android tablet, aiming for top-five mobile vendor billing

Huawei introduced its 7-inch, Android-running MediaPad at CommunicAsia, coinciding with a new survey that shows 7-inch tablets to be "destined for failure" in the face of the iPad

China-based Huawei Technologies is making a more aggressive push into the mobile tablet market. At the CommunicAsia 2011 event in Singapore, the company introduced the MediaPad, a 7-inch, Android-based tablet, and promised that a 10-inch version, hoped to also launch this year, is on the way, Reuters reported June 20.

It's said that the MediaPad will run a 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor, come pre-installed with applications such as Facebook and Twitter and be available in the third quarter through carriers and retail outlets, though no pricing details were shared.

The world's second-largest supplier of telecommunications equipment (today it also announced a major build-out win with TDC, Denmark's largest wireless carrier), Huawei has aspirations of becoming a top-five global handset maker in three years' time, Victor Xu, chief marketing officer of Huawei, told Reuters, and in April said that the company hopes to reach revenue of $100 billion, thanks to sales of smartphones and telecom devices.

Unclear is how the MediaPad -- pricing? -- will stand out in an already crowded market.

Bernstein Research, like JP Morgan Chase (CP: iPad sales hurting tablet's competitors) recently concluded that consumers don't so much want a tablet as they want an Apple iPad -- or at least something that closely resembles it.

"We find that consumers are not interested in form factors that deviate from the benchmark set by Apple. Few consumers, less than 15 percent, prefer the 7" screen size versus the 10" screen of the iPad," said a new survey from the firm, according to All Things D. "Over 50 percent of respondents are firmly in favor of the 10" screen, which leads us to conclude that the 7" tablet models recently launched, like the Blackberry Playbook, are destined for failure. Consumer’s preference for the 10" form factor explains the lukewarm response to Samsung's 7" Galaxy tablet and the rapid introduction of larger screen models in that series."

Not great news for Huawei.

Other not great news: The Apple brand appeal was found to be approximately four times stronger than any of its competitors'. When asked which brand of tablet they thought they'd choose, 50% of consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom said Apple. In the U.S., the next-highest ranking brand was Dell, which grabbed just 12% of votes, followed by RIM's BlackBerry, which appealed to 9 percent of those surveyed. (In the U.K. Samsung came in second, at 13 percent, followed by RIM, with 10 percent of the vote.)

"In the U.S., we find that Apple has more than double the brand appeal of Blackberry, HTC, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung combined," states the report. "These manufacturers have a very high level of brand equity and visibility in adjacent categories. It is striking that they hold so little appeal for consumers in tablets.”

Outside of Asia, Huawei, an undoubtedly lesser-known brand, has its work cut out for it.