After Asus, both computer giants Lenovo and Acer are said to be planning quad core tablet devices that will use Android Ice Cream Sandwich and the quad core Nvidia Tegra 3, in what would be yet even more design wins for the US-based semiconductor company.

According to Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai from Digitimes who quote sources within the notebook community, Samsung Electronics will also launch a quad core tablet, but the third generation tablets may prove to be a harder sell than the previous one.

As the sources point out, the main improvements will be with performance and design, but overall the concept will remain the same with the same screen size and resolution and possibly slightly improved camera.

The new tablets are expected to cost up to $599 and account for up to 15 per cent of the total tablet market worldwide.

There had been rumours that the pure PC manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Samsung and Lenovo could be contemplating leaving the market altogether after disappointing sales.

2012 promises to be an even tougher year with the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and even Ratuken launching subsidised tablets that are sold at cost price with profit being derived from content sales.