Samsung Electronics, one of the world's largest makers of consumer electronics, said that it had managed to sell 600 thousand of its Galaxy Tab slates in about a month after start of sales. The number cannot be compared to sales of Apple iPad, but they give a clear sign that there is a market for Google Android-based tablets.

On Sunday the company said in an interview with Korea Herald that after beginning sales of Galaxy Tab 7" tablet in late October in Italy, the company has sold over 600 thousand of its slates worldwide. In fact, in its home market of South Korea, about 30 thousand Galaxy Tab slates were sold in the first week. At present the device is available in 30 countries.

Samsung Galaxy Tab GT-P1000 is based on Google Android 2.2 operating system that is primarily designed for mobile phones and was tailored for slate device by Samsung itself. The device is powered by ARM Cortex-A8 1.0GHz processor, PowerVR SGX 540 graphics processor, features 512MB of random access memory (RAM) and either 16GB or 32GB of flash storage. The product is equipped with 7" screen with 1024*600 resolution, 3.0MP camera with flash, 1.3MP front-facing camera, 802.11a/b/g/n controller, GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSUPA/HSDPA, Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA and so on. The GT-P1000 weighs 380 grams.

Even though sales of Galaxy Tab cannot be compared to sales of Apple iPad, which was sold in 7.5 million quantity, it should be noted that the device is somewhat experimental. The tablet from Samsung uses Google Android 2.2 that was not designed for slates and user experience may not be excellent. Besides, availability of tablet software for Android 2.2 is not wide. In fact, even Samsung itself expected to sell one million of slates this year. The number will likely not only be met, but it will also be exceeded as particularly in the U.S. there is going to be an uptick in sales on Black Friday.

“We believe tablet PCs will take over a bigger portion of the market next year. For this year, we are projecting to sell up to one million units," said Shin Jong-kyun, the head of Samsung’s mobile division, at the IFA gadget expo in Berlin in September.

Tags: Samsung, Galaxy Tab, Cortex, PowerVR, iPad