Intel ‘Oak Trail’ is headed for tablets in early 2011

Intel’s been quite forthcoming over the past few weeks about its intentions to play in the booming tablet market, and apparently Oak Trail’s going to be its ticket. Despite its name, the Atom SoC platform is actually closer to Moorestown than Pine Trail or Pine View — the major difference here is that Intel’s added Lincroft and Whitney Point to enable support for Windows 7. It will also support Google and MeeGo operating systems, so feel free to let your imagination run wild with that. Intel’s not sharing much else right now in terms of architecture, but the long and short of it is that the fanless solution will enable thinner tablets with better battery life than the current Menlow platform, and will also add full 1080p playback and HDMI support. But we’ve still got a time to go until Oak Trail will be powering slates, as it won’t ship until early 2011 at best. Funny enough, that certainly seems to line up well with ASUS Eee Pad’s 2011 Q1 ship date, but feel free to make what you will of the so-called coincidence. Either way, it looks like the next year will be another interesting one for tablets, and the players look to be multiplying by the minute.