The tablet world saw new light when Apple launched its iPad few years ago.  As we can see, every mobile company is now launching their own versions of a tablet, with Android making some serious gains in the sector, now taking a 20% market share.

On Friday Acer started shipping a US$329 Iconia Tab A100 tablet, which the company says is the first tablet with a 7-inch screen to run Android 3.2.  The A100 comes in several flavors. The 8GB models, dubbed A100-07u08u and A100-07u08w (sold in Walmart only), will cost $330, while the 16GB A100-07u16u costs $350.  While the minimal on-board storage could be an issue to some, all of these models have a micoSD card slot, so you can expand capacity at will, up to 32GB.

The A100’s core specs have a familiar ring: a 1GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of memory, and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi.  But this is the first Tegra 2 tablet with a 7-inch display. And it’s among the first tablets, 7-inch or otherwise, with Android 3.2 Honeycomb.

This latest version of Honeycomb is specifically optimized to support different screen sizes, and to make it easier for developers to design for different screen sizes. Beyond this, Honeycomb is largely unchanged from 3.1.  The camera specs are beefier than what is on many tablets: The A100 has a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

“The Acer Iconia Tab A100 tablet delivers the ultimate combination of portability and performance for fun and gaming as well as staying in touch,” said Acer America’s VP of marketing Sumit Agnihotry, in a statement. “Families are spending more time social networking and enjoying Web-based digital media, so a highly portable tablet like the Acer A100 will let them get more done and stay connected on-the-go to enjoy their lives more fully.”

Lenovo’s prepping its tablet for the market as well. Lenovo’s IdeaPad K1 comes in three color combos—black and silver, red and silver, or white and silver. It’s priced comparably at $499.99 for a 32GB, Wi-Fi-only model ($519.99 for the black and silver model with a leather cover). That’s $100 less expensive than the same-capacity from the iPad 2, and is on par with the lower-cost Honeycomb tablets—the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 (3.5 stars) is also $499 for 32GB, while the Wi-Fi Motorola Xoom goes for $599. The 3G model for the K1, as well as other size options (16 and 64GB) which aren’t available yet, but should be soon, according to Lenovo.

Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard is getting more aggressive with its debut webOS tablet, slashing its TouchPad price down to $399 just one month after being released.  It might look like a setback against Apple’s market-leading iPad, but may actually be part of a shrewd strategy to be a prosperous no. 2.

HP has opted for Qualcomm’s 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon APQ8060, the non-3G version of the chip found inside the HTC Sensation.  That makes it – on paper at least – faster than the Apple A5 based iPad 2 and the various Tegra 2 powered Android Honeycomb tablets, with their 1GHz clock speeds. HP’s webOS platform is the underdog in today’s mobile space.

The new price for the 16GB and 32GB versions are US$400 and US$500 respectively. These are both US$100 down from the original prices.

Moreover, Samsung has begun sending out invitations to press for an industry event in New York City where we fully expect them to unveil the various U.S. iterations of the Galaxy S II.  Why?  Because the ‘major product announcement” invite has a big, fat “II” on it on August 29.  The handset maker promises additional details will follow, but we know doors open at 6:00PM EST.

The Samsung flagship smartphone has been available in other countries for quite some time, but has taken its time making it to US shores, where rumor has it that the Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone will be eventually hitting all major US carriers.  The original Samsung Galaxy S was a big hit for Sammy and personally I have handled the UK Galaxy S II and have to say it is a very nice device, so for all you Android faithfuls in the land of the free, you just might have a Galaxy S II to call your own.