Dell has confirmed it is developing 10in Windows and Android tablets - and that it plans to use them to conquer China.

But it may also bring the gadget to the West during the second half of the year, the company's South-East Asia chief said.

The Streak 10 Pro - set to be followed by a separate, big biz-oriented version running Windows 7 - will debut in China "this summer", said Dell excutive Amit Midha.

Midha admitted that China lacks Google's Android Market and online applications, so it will have to create its own.

The 10 Pro sports a 1280 x 800 display and lots of as-you'd-expect Android tablet spec, including a dual-core Nvidia Tegra CPU.

And there may lay the reason for Dell's seeming unwillingness to release the Streak Pro 10 over here. Quad-core Tegras are expected to be out by the autumn. Once they ship, performance-hungry Westerners won't settle for anything less.

So the less fussy Chinese get the dual-core model, and we get a souped up version better able to compete with what Apple and others are believed to be coming up with. ®