Galapagos, the name of the South American islands where English naturalist Charles Darwin discovered rare species of creatures, is used as an adjective to describe the isolation of Japanese mobile industry from the world standard.
But Sharp dared to name their brand new digital tablet product “Galapagos[J]“, in spite of the word’s negative meaning, which makes us feel they’re committed to selling it in full throttle. The word can be considered as a symbol of the evolution corresponding to intense changes, they say. Galapagos uses Android OS as its platform and has WiFi accessibility. According to where you will use it, you may choose one from 5.5-inch model for mobile use and 10.8-inch model for home use. It’s now being exhibited at Japan’s equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show, CEATEC Japan 2010 (Makuhari, Chiba), and will be on sale in December.
Sharp also announced they had tied up with CCC (Culture Convenience Club) operating Japan’s largest video rental store chain Tsutaya[J], the country’s equivalent of Blockbuster Video, and the two companies would launch a joint venture in November for hosting a content portal called Tsutaya Galapagos for distributing e-books, movies and music content to the Galapagos users. Sharp invest 49% and CCC 51% into the joint venture. 30,000 items of the content such as newspapers and magazines will be available at the time of the portal launch in December, and a variety of the content will be expanded up to 230,000 items.
Sharp expects to enhance the content distribution service as to be used from their smartphone devices and LCD TVs in the future.
Video by: DigInfo.TV on YouTube
Masaru IKEDA