Google has been pretty mum, at least in public, Gingerbread, which at last check was still scheduled to launch sometime this winter. However, DigiTimes has gotten word that Google has recently reached out to its hardware partners to let them know that development on Gingerbread "will soon be completed" and that they can expect engineering prototypes sometime in December. Expect an updated Galaxy Tab from Samsung, as well as tablet offerings from Motorola, HTC, and traditional notebook manufacturers like Acer once CES rolls around in January of next year.
In addition, the site said we can expect Android 4.0 (Honeycomb?) during the middle of 2011, but did not offer any details on the OS. They went on to explain some of the benefits of using Android as a tablet OS over Windows: namely, that licensing for Android is just $10 compared to up to $60 for Windows. In addition, the ARM processors used by Android are much cheaper than the Intel ones required by Windows. So, in short, expect to see tons of Android tablets come January. But that's hardly a surprise, right? [DigiTimes]
