Samsung has announced it’ll be shipping out an alternative to the iPad, the Galaxy Tab. Samsung’s unit manager believes the company will sell 10 million of the Galaxy Tab, and the device might be sold for $300, although nobody’s sure of pricing.

If nothing else kept you from buying this, the following paragraph would do the job:

Rather than sell it directly to consumers, Samsung will rely on its carrier partners to sell the Galaxy Tab, which runs on Google Inc.’s  Android software, comes with a cellular connection, and features a seven-inch screen. The tablet will debut in Italy, moving to other markets as Samsung locks in more carrier deals.

Take a good look: this is the least bloated Galaxy tablet you'll ever see, sans the usual Android crapware

Carrier-controlled devices are built and sold to seal the deal on carrier plans. Those are the two-year contracts you’re usually trying to break when something better is announced. The carriers are given control of what’s loaded on the tablet which cannot be removed: that’s an aspect of using an Android phone or tablet. Apple does a little of this — stocks, weather, Maps, contacts, a browser, photo app, videos and iTunes. But that’s all, and it’s the same Apple-built apps for every iPad or iPhone sold.

What’s more, the iPad apps are built to withstand malware and hacks — or at least far better built to repel that junk than open source software from the Android world.

Carriers, on the other hand, can build and install whatever they can get to run on Android. It can be something they cut a deal with a company to install, another way to generate some bucks. And it can be real crapware, defined as stuff that may bug up your system, but whether you like it or not it’s still a very lucrative source of advertising revenue for the carriers. You can’t remove it because Android is open.

So to recap, the Galaxy Tab “features” a smaller screen, on a device that’s controlled by the phone companies (we love those guys so much, don’t we?) And Samsung is so confident of its tablet that it’s launching it in the great tech mecca of the world, Italy.

Look for a lot of these sorts of rollouts over the next year. Since Apple proved they can sell a million tablets a month, everybody wants that kind of action. You gotta build a really good product to get those numbers, of course.

Tags: Android, carrier, tablets