LG Places Hopes in Tablet Market Success: Optimus Pad LTE Unveiled

Looking to reverse its ailing financial fortunes, LG has officially announced its Optimus Pad LTE tablet.

Announced on Wednesday, despite running on the soon to be outdated Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system, the tablet is set to house some pretty impressive tech.

Featuring the same True HD IPS display used on the company's high-end smartphones the new Optimus Tab's 8.9-inch screen will run at a reasonable 1280 x 720-pixel resolution.

Backing this up, the new Optimus Pad will pack a rear-facing 8-megapixel camera, 2-megapixel front facing snapper, SD card slot, HDMI-out and 6,8000 mAh battery. Powering all this will be a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm processor.

Unfortunately, past its spec LG has been pretty cagey regarding the unit's price or exact release date. Additionally, the company's announcement only referred to a US release, leaving it unlikely that the LTE enabled tablet will be reaching 4G-less British shores anytime soon.

Whatever the units cost LG will have high hopes for the device, with sales of its Android smartphones lagging significantly behind those of Samsung and HTC.

Earlier in 2011 the company's quarterly financial statements revealed a consistent drop in revenue, with its smartphone shipments and sales reaching disturbingly low levels despite a general growth in the smartphone market.

So bad were the company's fortunes that come November, 2011 LG was facing wide-spread speculation that it was on its last legs, being on the brink of cutting 30 percent of its oversees staff.