On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Toshiba launches the Excite X10 tablet at CES 2012-- the thinnest tablet from the company yet, with a 7.7mm profile and a 10.1" 1280x800 Gorilla Glass display.

Powering the device is a dual-core OMAP 4430 1.2GHz CPU from Texas Instruments, while Bluetooth 2.1 and 802.11b/g/n wifi provide connectivity. Ports come in micro varieties of HDMI, USB 2.0 and SD card slot.

It also has built-in speakers supporting Toshiba SRS sound enchancement technology, a 2MP front-facing camera a 5MP back camera with an LED backlight. Android 4.0 acts as OS.

Models will be available with either 16 or 32GB of storage from "mid first quarter" 2012.

Like many other vendors, Toshiba also has a new skinny ultrabook on display at CES-- the 14" Portege 2830, with USB, HDMI, RGB and ethernet ports. The company has "Visible Man" style model with a clear plastic case at its CES stand, showing off a shrunken motherboard providing space for cooling and standard-sized memory.

Go Toshiba CES 2012 Plans

For first time, the Dutch-owned Lenco will attend the CES.

“Taking part in this internationally well known fair in Las Vegas is very important for us. Lenco is expanding further into markets worldwide”, says Nico Brabers, president and CEO for Lenco.

Lenco will feature its range of products such as new 3D Sound systems with built in Absolute 3D Sound technology from the Swiss company Sonic Emotion, as well as new iPhone/iPod Towers. Also showcased is a successor of its ‘'Speakerball’.

Go Lenco

2011 hasn't been too kind on European retail, not with the region still risking recession and a CE market undergoing "significant deterioration" (according to GfK). But who were the movers and shakers this year?

The biggest retail headline was definitely Best Buy's leaving the UK and closing its 11 big box stores in the country, following £62 million worth of losses last fiscal year. The UK pull out follows something of a pattern for the retailer, as it also left Turkey (after a 2-store trial) and closed all 9 Best Buy branded stores in China in favour expanding the more profitable Five Star brand-- something it will surely repeat with the Carphone Warehouse, in which it still holds a stake.

Analysts might describe 2011 as year of the tablet, with forecasts predicting further growth for a device category most vendors dismissed before 2010. But one can also say 2011 was a very hard year for all tablets that weren't iPads...

Apple launched the iPad 2 on March-- and while the device was more of an lighter and thinner evolution than an outright revolution, it still sold an estimated 500000 on its first weekend in the US.

In the meantime, other vendors scrambled to launch the competition. Google optimised Android for tablet use with Honeycomb, which found use in the Motorola Xoom (the first tablet to run the OS), the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (more about that later) and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, the first tablet using Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor.