Huawei unveils MediaPad powered by Android

SINGAPORE: China's Huawei Technologies unveiled a new tablet computer called the MediaPad on Monday that it hopes could take on market leaders Apple and Samsung Electronics.

The launch would be part of an aggressive push by Huawei, the world's second-biggest supplier of telecommunications equipment behind Ericsson, into the consumer space.

"With the Huawei MediaPad, we are demonstrating yet again that design, functionality and performance is within anyone's reach," Victor Xu, chief marketing officer of Huawei Device, said in a statement.

Huawei Device is a division of Huawei Technologies that makes cellphones, smartphones and tablet PCs.

Huawei said the 7-inch MediaPad will run on the Android operating system from Google Inc and use a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor from Qualcomm. It will also come with pre-installed applications such as Facebook and Twitter.

The global tablet PC market is now dominated by Apple's iPad with about 80 percent of market share.

In China, apart from Apple, Huawei's tablet PCs also compete with Lenovo and ZTE.