Industry experts are predicting that 2012 will be the year that tablets take over and manufacturers are listening. Yesterday Acer released its Iconia Tab A200 with a pretty little price tag of just $329.99.

The tablet runs on the Android operating system with a 10.1-inch screen. Acer is positioning the tablet as a portable activity hub that connects users with gaming, ebooks, movies, music, photography and social networking.

?Tablets made quite a splash [in 2011],? said Karim Temsamani, vice president of mobile ads at Google, Mountain View, CA, in a post on the company?s blog. ?Usage trends sharpened - we?re seeing that people use these devices to shop, consume media, have fun, and they do so most frequently in the evenings.  

?Tablets are a third screen to be reckoned with for marketers - we saw a 440 percent growth in traffic from tablets in November 2011 compared to December 2010 on the AdMob network,? he said. 

?The business potential is tremendous: not only are users more inclined to shop and make purchases on tablets, but because campaigns can be more effective running across several screens instead of one, tablets offer an incremental opportunity for marketers.?  

The new Acer Iconia Tab A200 tablet will be available to consumers in the United States Jan. 15.

The tablet weighs 1.5 lbs and is wrapped in a titanium, gray-colored casing that has a patterned back side designed to be soft to the touch. 

With an HD multi-touch display featuring 1280 x 800 resolution, Acer promises buyers a superior viewing experience. The tablet also has a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core mobile processor and integrated GeForce GPU that that optimizes the experience for HD gaming, Flash-based applications, faster browsing and multitasking.

The Iconia Tab A200 comes preloaded with apps like Kindle and Netflix. With access to the Android Market, users can browse thousands of downloadable apps.

Additionally, the new tablet has a full-size USB 2.0 port for hooking up other devices and a MicroSD slot and micro-USB port for passing data. 

A two megapixel front-facing Web camera enables face-to-face chats or quick snaps for still photos, much like Apple?s iPad 2. For an enhanced social networking experience, the Iconia Tab A200 includes Acer SocialJogger, which consolidates Facebook, Twitter and more into one spot.

According to a recent report by Forrester Research, ownership of tablet devices will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 51 percent from 2010 to 2015. 

The report goes further to say that the majority of consumers that own a tablet are conducting commerce transactions on it. 

Forrester expects that as tablet ownership and usage grows, so will tablet commerce. This is an obvious opportunity for marketers. 

Tablets like the Acer Iconia, Apple iPad, and HP TouchPad will reach approximately 33 percent of U.S. adults by 2015.

?All eyes have been on tablets: Apple sold 40 million iPads in just 18 months, with 11 million sold in [the fourth quarter of 2011] alone,? said Sarah Rotman Epps, senior analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, MA, in a post on the company?s blog.

?With the Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet finding their own successful markets, it?s easy to see why tablets attract so much attention and excitement,? she said.