Verizon and Google to team up on Android flavored tablet as iPad challenger

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said on Tuesday that the carrier is teaming up with Google to offer an Android powered tablet to take on Apple and AT&T's iPad. "What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are?" Mr. McAdam said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "We're working on tablets together, for example. We're looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience." Apps like Google Maps, YouTube and Android Market can join together with Big Red's VCAST audio and video products to offer streaming video and e-reader capabilities. With Android 2.2 quite possibly under the hood, Flash-enabled browsing could be a feature of the product. Marquett Smith, a Verizon spokesman, said that more details will be released later this week just before the Google I/O show, which means that Google itself might let some details about the tablet slip. You might recall that about a month ago, we reported that Google CEO Eric Schmidt spread the word about an Android tablet during a dinner party.

One comment made by McAdam that might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up has to do with unlimited price plans on his and other firm's new 4G networks , "The old model of one price plan per device is going to fall away." The Verizon exec says that he expects carriers to charge a monthly rate that targets a "bucket of megabytes," and "it's not out of the question" to see customers with multiple devices paying more to connect to the next-generation network.

source: WSJ