ASUS Shows Off Windows 8-Powered Vivo Tab and Vivo Tab RT Tablets
Today at IFA Berlin, ASUS unveiled updated and renamed versions of the ASUS Tablet 810 and Tablet 600 Windows 8 slates that it first announced at Computex Taipei in June. Now dubbed the ASUS Vivo Tab and Vivo Tab RT respectively …
Context & Ripple Effects
ASUS has been telegraphing this move for over a year: the Computex 2011 tablet teaser opened its push into slates, the Transformer line (Prime, then TF300) built its Android credibility, and at Computex Taipei in June it showed raw Windows 8 hardware — the Tablet 810 and Tablet 600 — alongside the Transformer AiO all-in-one that dual-boots Android and Windows 8 and the dual-screen TAICHI convertible.
IFA Berlin is where those engineering names become retail products: the Tablet 810 is now the Vivo Tab and the Tablet 600 the Vivo Tab RT. Pickup across eight outlets — Engadget, The Verge, Mashable and others running the same story — reflects how much attention the first wave of Windows 8 tablets is drawing ahead of the operating system's launch.
First-order effects
- ASUS replaces the Tablet 810/600 designations with a unified Vivo consumer brand, giving its x86 and ARM Windows slates a single retail identity before Windows 8 hardware hits shelves.
- The Vivo Tab RT drops ASUS into direct competition with Acer, Samsung and Lenovo, whose Windows 8 devices were already being handled side-by-side with ASUS's in June hands-on sessions.
Second-order effects
- The RT-versus-full-Windows split forces ASUS to price and position two architectures of near-identical slates — the same dilemma every Windows OEM faces as the launch approaches.
- A single Vivo umbrella lets ASUS extend one brand across form factors, echoing the Transformer playbook of one line covering many configurations, from docked tablets to the dual-booting AiO.
Third-order effects
- If the naming holds, ASUS is organizing its post-PC portfolio around consumer brands rather than chip architecture, letting Windows RT and full Windows 8 coexist under one label while the market decides between them.
- The breadth of ASUS's June-and-August reveals — Android tablets, dual-boot desktops, convertibles, and now two Windows slates — points to hybrid form factors becoming the standard hedge for PC makers unwilling to bet on a single tablet OS.
The trend: PC makers are entering the Windows 8 era by unifying ARM and x86 tablets under single consumer brands, while hedging with hybrid and dual-boot designs until the tablet market settles.