Going from manufacturing smartphones to tablets isn't such a huge step (as Samsung has proved with its Galaxy Tab), these two types of devices sharing much of the same hardware and software, differing only in size, so the latest rumor that states HTC has placed orders with Pegatron in order to build an Android tablet PC aren't that hard to believe.

This report comes from DigiTimes and states the future tablet will be built using the Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC together with Google's Android operating system, with full support for Android Market as well as Chrome Web apps.

Other hardware specs list a 1280×720 multi-touch panel, probably 10 inch in size, a 32GB solid state drive, 2GB of memory and several other functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.  

Together with the Tegra 2 platform, this should make HTC's future tablet really snappy while also featuring improved multimedia performance since the Nvidia's chip comes equipped to handle 1080p video decoding.

Pricing wise, the tablet is expected to be somewhere around NT$25,000 (US$789.75) without any carrier subsidizing, so this won't come cheap by any means.

All in all, I would have to say that HTC's future tablet may prove to be one of the strongest iPad competitors available, since the company is no stranger of building powerful mobile devices.