Which Tablet Makers Should You Invest In? – Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc (GOOG)

Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY)

Surprise! While not a lot of people know it yet, retailer Best Buy is now selling its own line of tablets. Called the Insignia Flex, it’s designed to compete directly with the lower-end (read: not the iPad) tablets by Samsung and others. It’s yet to be seen how well it’ll be received, but Best Buy has a few things going for it. First, the company is trying to make itself the must-stop location for those looking to buy a tablet, and second, there’s a lot of Best Buy stores out there to sell the things. Note that this one is also using the Android software and therefore that app store. Very tricky, people. Best Buy’s stock hasn’t really plunged. It’s sort of slowly meandered downhill for a year. Still, it’s worth a limited pick up if you have the money, and it just got upgraded by Barclays.

Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) BlackBerry

God love them, my first smartphone was a BlackBerry. It may seem like an odd choice for a column about tablets, but apps are sold for smartphones as well. And BlackBerry has an install base that can’t be easily ignored. It’s yet to be seen whether the new BlackBerry 10 can succeed in the crowded smartphone market. If it does though, it’ll open doors for app developers. New markets are always appreciated. BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) hasn’t had a good few years, but there are some early signs that it might be turning its share price around. Shares have more than doubled in the last five months, and that can’t all be attributable to hype. I’m very cautiously optimistic about BlackBerry. But you should only put very risky money into it.

Tablets, smartphones and apps for both are a very fast-moving market right now. To play it an investor should be both hard-hearted and nimble. Only put your money into firms in this space when you absolutely know that they know what they’re doing and that they have other product lines that can help support the expansion into the market. Whatever the tablet market looks like today, it’s going to look entirely different in five and ten years as it matures.

Good luck!

The article Which Tablet Makers Should You Invest In? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Nate Wooley.

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