People close to Taiwanese motherboard / notebook manufacturer MSI have told us that they want to focus on Windows 7 tablets first and they have already started shipping the MSI WindPad 232W 10.1 inch tablet.

Windows 7 Home Premium works quite well with the touch controls and the company is quite happy with it. You should be able to find one in Europe for between 500 and 600 euro.

When asked about Android, our sources, who are lot of frequent flier miles away from Western Europe, told us that earliest that the this might happen is Q2 2011 while Q3 2011 is also a viable option. The reason is simple. MSI wants to see Android mature enough before it makes a move.

Today, February 2nd is the Honeycomb Android 3.0 big announcement and Android 3.0 OS powered devices should start appearing before the end of Q1 2011 (ends on March 31 2011). Despite the big hype that the media created around Honeycomb, Android 3.0, MSI just like many other big Taiwanese vendors want to wait to see it really working well.

You might see some prototypes at Cebit but the real devices are likely Computex or back to school time.