Samsung's mobile division VP Lee Don-Joo says its company will have to rethink their pricing strategy now that Apple announced its second-generation iPad. Speaking to the Korean Yonhap news agency, the executive supposedly admitted that Samsung "will have to improve the parts that are inadequate" and may have to forgo its original plan to sell the 10-inch Galaxy Tab for more money than the 7-inch model when it was introduced.
The iPad's iterative hardware improvements weren't much of a surprise as Apple simply catches up – at least on paper – with the competition by adding a dual-core processor and faster graphics, plus front and rear cameras. What seems to have left them, in Jobs parlance, flummoxed, is the thin form factor. Add the fact that the iPad 2 retains its $499 starting price, with a user interface and app ecosystem that's pretty solid at this point and you have quite a challenge.
Samsung's Galaxy Tab was the first major Android tablet to be billed as a serious competitor to the iPad. However, while it seemingly had an edge in terms of hardware, it also featured a smaller 7-inch LCD screen and debuted at $600 without contract using a non-tablet optimized OS. Samsung hasn't officially announced the price for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or a launch date for the U.S., but we'll know soon enough if they stick to plans of releasing it this month in Europe.