In a first, American Airlines (AA) has decided to provide Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for premium class in-flight entertainment. The airline plans to deploy 6,000 of the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices onboard on select routes beginning later this year.
Tablets are increasingly finding its way into the enterprise world, where companies are using tablets to empower their mobile workforce to be connected wherever they go and have a fully functional computing experience which is truly mobile.
Movie streaming on tablet is already available with some airline in the West. But, this is for the first time perhaps that tablets will replace the in-flight entertainment system.
The tablets will replace American Airlines’ current personal entertainment device in premium cabins on transcontinental flights between New York’s JFK and Los Angeles, JFK and San Francisco, and Miami and Los Angeles.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be customised for the airline’s use with array of applications enhancing the in-flight entertainment experience including AA’s streaming service mentioned last month, and will also offer “expanded memory” for the devices.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a WiFi-enabled tablet that measures at just 8.6 millimeters in width, making it the thinnest large screen tablet currently available in the world. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is powered by the Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) platform.
The American Airlines already offers in-flight movie streams to iPad users via WiFi. But it’s not alone, earlier this year Alaska Airlines adopted the iPad for inflight manuals.