Vivo might be about to launch an affordable Android tablet

Vivo is best known for its affordable Android phones, but it looks as though the Chinese tech company is planning to launch a larger device in the not-too-distant future: a trademark for the name Vivo Pad has just been logged with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

As spotted by GSMArena, the filing indicates a Class 9 device, which covers categories such as PDAs and tablets. Otherwise, there's very little in the way of actual information here – just an indication that this device is likely to be on the way.

This isn't actually a brand new rumor, because we've been hearing whispers about a Vivo tablet for a while, but it is perhaps the most solid bit of evidence about the device so far. The first Vivo tablet was originally tipped to arrive in January, though that didn't happen.

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As for predicting when the Vivo Pad (or whatever it ends up being called) will actually see the light of day, it's difficult to be any more precise than "sometime soon" – these kinds of filings are usually made relatively close to a product launch, so we might well get an appearance from the tablet in the next couple of months.

Incoming tablets

With very little information and nothing in the way of specs to go off, we're left extrapolating what Vivo does with its phones to try and figure out what a Vivo tablet might involve. Expect a solid build quality and an affordable price when it arrives.

We could certainly do with a few more budget Android tablets to take on the mighty iPad. At the moment the Amazon Fire tablets are perhaps the best option for inexpensive slates that aren't the iPad, but Amazon's Fire OS misses out on the Google Play Store and Google's suite of mobile apps.

Samsung makes some very impressive Android tablets as well, across a wide range of price points, but we'd certainly welcome some extra competition – and Vivo has the scale and manufacturing know-how to put together a solid device.

As GSMArena notes, both Oppo and Realme are rumored to be working on tablets of their own, so it looks as though we'll soon have quite a few new models to pick from besides the slates currently on the market.