Tablet wars hot up

Apple launches iPad Air as Nokia debuts its Windows tafblet

Apple Inc on Tuesday took the wraps off a slimmer faster tablet called iPad Air and said it will give away Macintosh operating and work software free to its users.

Apple announced the surprise offer, which will be available to all users of Apple MacBooks and Mac computers, at a product event on Tuesday at which it also unveiled a new line of Mac notebooks and computers.

"We are turning the industry on its ear, but this is not why we're doing it," Apple CEO Cook told media and technology executives at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center.

The iPad Air is about 20 per cent thinner than the previous generation of tablets, starting at $499.

Earlier, Nokia - in its first product introduction since agreeing to sell its handset business to Microsoft Corp - showed a tablet and smartphones that give a glimpse of how the merged businesses will try to revive demand.

The Lumia 2520, Nokia's first tablet, runs Microsoft's Windows RT 8.1 software and has a 10.1-inch display. It costs $499 before taxes and carrier subsidies and will start selling this quarter, initially in the UK, Finland and the US by carriers including AT&T Inc. Nokia also showed two smartphones with six-inch screens, a category often dubbed phablets.

The products expand the Windows mobile-device line-up and signal the type of features that Microsoft will bet on in its hardware push after its first products failed to win over users. Its $7.2-billion deal for Espoo, Finland-based Nokia's devices unit, set to be completed next quarter, are part of the company's plan to challenge Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co's dominance of the tablet and smartphone markets.

"We talk a lot about Lumia and Nokia and Microsoft talks about Microsoft and Windows Phone. As we market our products you get a cacophony of different brands," Stephen Elop, head of the Nokia device unit being sold to Microsoft, said on Tuesday in an interview in Abu Dhabi. "You'll see us simplify those brands."