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• AAPL 84% Rate It
• AMZN 81% Rate It
• GOOG 87% Rate It
• MSFT 82% Rate It

Samsung Electronics Co . launched its new tablet Galaxy Note 10.1 in the U.S., Great Britain and South Korea, and promised a worldwide launch in the not-too-distant future.

Samsung's new tablet will compete directly with Apple 's ( AAPL ) iPad, and the base price remains comparable with the 32GB model going somewhat cheaper.

The new tablet is designed to eliminate stylistic similarities with the iPad that have the two companies battling in court. It therefore adds two new features that the iPad doesn't have -  a stylus called S-Pen for taking notes or sketching and a split-screen for using certain applications simultaneously.

The tablet uses the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google 's ( GOOG ) Android OS, and a quad-core processor running at 1.4 GHz. It also has a standard 5-megapixel rear camera and 1.9-megapixel front facing camera.

As per U.S. research firm IHS iSuppli, Apple has a 69.6% share of the tablet market, with Samsung far behind at 9.2% and Amazon ( AMZN ) third at 4.2%.

The tablet war is really heating up with manufacturers launching newer versions. Microsoft ( MSFT ) is entering the market with its Windows 8 tablet priced at $199.0. This price range is similar to Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire.

In any consumer market, the market leader tends to lose some share, so this is not a special negative for Apple (assuming that all the other devices taken together make a sizeable dent). As long as the market itself continues to grow, any player with a good product and solid strategy is likely to remain a winner.

Currently, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have a Zacks Rank of #3, implying a short-term 'Hold' recommendation.

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