The High-Performance Tablet

Since a while back I signed up for the Disney Movie Rewards program (that's where there are points inside their movies that you can accumulate and spend to get various rewards), I've been regularly receiving their emails. Most of which I don't care about, but occasionally there are offers I find interesting. The other day, an email went around with information on a contest they're running over the summer.

The email detailed the prizes that can be won—Free admission to every Disney movie in 2012, an Epson projector and screen, a High-Performance Tablet, and a million Disney Movie Rewards points. Note the third prize? A "High-Performance Tablet." It's as if they're embarrassed to say what tablet they're giving away, but I'm willing to bet it isn't an iPad.

Could it be a Motorola Xoom perhaps? For which initial reviews said it felt like an incomplete product? Which indeed it was, as it shipped with many headline features that weren't available yet, to be added later via software updates, or by taking it to a store later to physically add the necessary component when they finish making it.

Or perhaps the RIM PlayBook? Which has been the brunt of many jokes? At one point, if you wanted a cell phone that you could check your emails on, you couldn't do any better than one of RIM's Blackberries. And yet, that same company somehow thought it was a great idea to release a tablet that couldn't check email on it's own. You'd need to either link it with a Blackberry, or hope you could check your email using a web site.

Maybe it's the HP TouchPad. Heard of it? I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't. Sales on that were so poor that Best Buy (no idea if this is just US, or includes Canada too) only sold 10% of their stock and is demanding that HP buy back their well over 200,000 units of excess unsold stock. And just today, word got out that HP is going to can their entire tablet and smartphone business. Only weeks after launching, the TouchPad is already obsolete.

Another possibility could be the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Assuming they're allowed to sell it, that is. Legal proceedings are currently underway in various places worldwide to determine that. Apple alleges that the 10.1's physical and user interface design are a direct copy of the iPad and is actively pursuing injunctions against Samsung.

But most likely, the prize is some cheap tablet that I haven't even heard of, by a company I may not have heard of either. And by "high-performance" they mean it's from someone who thinks specs are everything. Throw in some high-powered chips, and hope people think that's what makes a tablet great. Sure, the software may suck big time, but it's faster.

Of course, there's a chance that the prize actually is an iPad, but I doubt it. Aside from the fact that the picture clearly shows a stylus resting on it, which an iPad does not include or need, if the prize was something as wildly popular as the iPad, they most definitely would make it very obvious. I'm 100% certain that telling people they could win an iPad would greatly increase the number of entries in the contest. But, who knows what strange logic goes though the minds of these Big Corporation marketing gurus...