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Samsung has recently launched a new dual SIM phone in India called the B5722 Duos. The handset is equipped with a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen display (resistive), a 3MP camera, dual SIM card slots, a microSD card slot (up to 8GB), a music player, an FM radio with RDS, 3D sound output through DNSe, Bluetooth and provides quick access to popular social networking sites. The Samsung B5722 Duos is now available in India for a retail price of Rs 11,680 (about $254).

ABI Research said Tuesday that Apple’s iPad highlights the “real start” of a tablet computer market that should grow more than tenfold to reach about 57 million devices sold annually by 2015.

“Apple?s iPad is not the first media tablet,” said ABI senior analyst Jeff Orr. “But it does help define this new device category.”

The main focus of a media tablet is entertainment, according to the US-based market-tracking firm.

ABI defined the tablets as having touchscreen controls, wireless Internet connectivity, screens from five inches to 11 inches (12.7 cms to 27.94 cms) in size, and video and gaming capabilities.

“A tablet will not replace a laptop, netbook or mobile phone, but will remain an additional premium or luxury product for wealthy industrialized markets for at least several years,” Orr said.

ABI predicted tablet computer makers will ship four million units this year.

Apple is expected to be a “fairly sizable player” in a tablet arena with traditional computer makers such as Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard as well as small firms such as Notion Ink.

The culture-changing California firm may have done all media tablet sellers “a favor” by raising the public profile of the devices with iPad hoopla, according to Orr.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs hailed the iPad as a “revolutionary” device when he introduced it to the world on January 27 at an event in San Francisco.

Some technology analysts predict the iPad with its multimedia capabilities will be the best-selling electronics device in 2010.

Others question whether people will want to tote around what some called a notebook-sized iPhone without a phone.

Unveiling the iPad, Jobs admitted he was taking a gamble by trying to carve out an entirely new device category between the laptop computer and the smartphone.

It’ll all be over soon. The mystery. The anticipation. The rumors. Oh, the rumors. After the tablet is announced tomorrow, another stage in the gadget life cycle will begin. So take one last soak in every tablet rumor worth reading. We’ll be continuously updating our ongoing rumor roundup until our liveblog actually starts tomorrow morning. And the last 24 hours is always the most exciting. Anyone catch CNBC lately? So, catch up on what’s been leaked, what’s been whispered, what’s been sneezed—you don’t wanna be behind everybody else, do you?

Apple introduces New iPad tablet computer for $499: Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s much-anticipated iPad tablet computer Wednesday, calling it a new third category of mobile device that is neither smart phone nor laptop, but something in between.

The iPad will start at $499, a price tag far below the $1,000 that some analysts were expecting. But Apple must still persuade recession-weary consumers who already have other devices to open their wallets yet again. Apple plans to begin selling the iPad in two months.

Jobs said the device would be useful for reading books, playing games or watching video, describing it as “so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone.”

The half-inch-thick iPad is larger than the company’s popular iPhone but similar in design. It weighs 1.5 pounds and has a touch screen that is 9.7 inches diagonally. It comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage, and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in.

Jobs said the device has a battery that lasts 10 hours and can sit for a month on standby without needing a charge.

Raven Zachary, a contributing analyst with a mobile research agency called The 451 Group, considered the iPad a laptop replacement, especially because Apple is also selling a dock with a built-in keyboard.

But Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said he does not believe the iPad offered enough additional features for consumers to justify buying yet another gadget, or to call it a new category of device.

In an e-mail, he criticized its lack of social features, such as ways to share photos and home video and recommend books.

Sitting on stage in a cozy leather chair, Jobs demonstrated how the iPad is used for surfing the Web with Apple’s Safari browser. The CEO typed an e-mail using an on-screen keyboard and flipped through photo albums by flicking his finger across the screen.

The Acer Liquid A1 is now available in the UK market. The company’s first Android smartphone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor with a 3.5-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and Triband (900/1900/2100) HSDPA, WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and a 5-megapixel camera.

FYI, Acer has decided to underclock it to 768MHz in order to prolong the 1,350mAh battery life span. The Acer Liquid A1 is currently in stock at retailers Expansys and Clove, priced at £339.99 ($556) and £328.99 ($538), respectively.