Sprint has released a statement saying that upcoming tablets require voice capabilities in order to achieve success in the market, pointing towards the ways in which the carriers can pair such services with their plans and product range. Sprint’s Director of Business Product Marketing, Jeff Adelmann, stated that tablets should now include telephony as one of their prime features, suggesting that 4G and 3G models of these devices might not consolidate their position in the market before that happens.
There are currently five tablet models being offered by Sprint, which includes the HTC EVO View 4G and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Even as many tablets including these three sold by Sprint feature Wi-Fi connectivity, the comments from Adelmann could indicate that the network is interested in including tablets in its wireless network in order to boost their sales in the future and ensure that it caters to all the needs of its customers regarding its devices and data plans.
At the moment, tablets are available at a different pricing range than smartphones in the plans of most carriers, which makes it much cheaper for the users in most instances to purchase smartphones straight from the carriers and then buy a Wi-Fi supporting tablet from another source. Sprint also launched shared pricing schemes for multiple devices in the upcoming months. AT&T has also started offering shared plans from much earlier during this year and it is expected that Verizon too will roll out the same offers soon. A shared plan lets users share a data plan among all their devices which are connected to the same plan.
Sprint said that it may also feature voice enabled tablets in these shared data plans, providing the customers with an option to route calls from their smartphones to a tablet which is connected through Bluetooth, and then cover both these devices in a single pricing plan. Adelmann said that when tablets are made into communication devices, users will want constant connectivity which cannot be provided by Wi-Fi. As the sales of tablets rise steadily, Sprint is now looking at ways by which it can get more out of these devices and also help its slow selling Android slates to better compete with the market dominating force that is Apple’s iPad.
