Best Buy prepping re-branded tablet via Rocketfish line?

by Steven Mostyn - Aug 9 2010, 05:28

The tablet computer market is on the up, and it would appear that – much like 2009’s proliferation of Netbooks – everyone and their monkey wants in on the action. Moreover, indications from Best Buy’s chief technology officer (CTO) suggest the American retail giant is prepping a (re-branded?) tablet offering of its own.

Although there’s no concrete confirmation from Best Buy at this juncture, a tantalising tweet and accompanying photos posted by CTO and Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens have revealed a portable computing device the retailer could be preparing via its Rocketfish product line.

When prodded by fellow Twitter users as to the associated features of the pictured device, which bears a striking resemblance to Hewlett-Packard’s Slate, Stephens was only willing to let slip that it may well run on version 2.2 of Google’s Android operating system. HP’s Slate is likely to run on the Palm WebOS.

According to the NYTimes Personal Tech blog, Stephens has since revealed the pictured device is merely an empty-shell prototype. However, it does represent yet more teasing from a company that’s clearly keen on offering re-branded tech products via its Rocketfish label.

“I’ve been tweeting photos of tablet for months,” commented Stephens through his Twitter feed. “So much for the realtime web. No one should be surprised. Who do you think makes Insignia?” 

Rumours of Best Buy’s upcoming tablet come after rival retailer Kmart recently announced the availability of Augen’s Gentouch78, a modest 7.0-inch tablet computer with an 800MHz processor, Google Android, 256MBs of RAM, 2GBs of expandable memory and a price of just $150 USD. The Gentouch78 went on sale from July 31.

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