At CES, the walk to the far end of South Hall, past the giant Verizon and Research in Motion pavilions, was a long one. Eventually a reporter finds his way to the smaller-sized Archos booth. The company released new models late last year and didn’t have anything brand spanking new at the show, but was happy to talk about the strength of its current lineup and strategy going forward. 

First some important background. Archos is a French consumer electronics company founded in 1988 with offices and distribution around the world. Although the company is now specializing in Android-powered tablets, it launched the first MP3 player combined with a hard disk, the Jukebox 6000, in 2000. Later the company introduced a series of portable multimedia players with TV recording capability adding touch screens in 2007. 

Zip forward to 2009 for the launch of the Archos 5 internet tablet running Android software  a year before Apple launched the iPad. “We didn’t know we were ahead of what turned out to be such a huge market,” said Archos’ director of marketing Craig TerBlanche. 

The company continues to innovate with such products as the Archos 3s Home Connect, a portable Internet radio device that weighs a mere 250 grams and puts “Android on your dresser.” 

A 3.5-inch touch screen offers quick access to playlists, weather and traffic reports, while the integrated TuneIn Web radio application offers access to over 50,000 stations and 120,000 radio shows from around the world. You can also use the alarm clock feature to wake up to Web radio or your own MP3 files. This isn’t a cheap radio for your dresser at $149.99, but probably appeals to those who like to have the latest cutting edge gadgets. 

“Let’s crank this bad boy up,” says TerBlanche as he happily shows off the Home Connect’s two built-in high definition speakers by blasting out some tunes.

On the more traditional tablet front Archos offers a range of 7, 8 and 10-inch models running Android and is also in the Windows market with the Archos 9 PCtablet. 

TerBlanche says the 8-inch model is selling “really well” and is an attractive form factor because it’s more portable than the iPad with the same screen aspect ratio. 

The Archos 80 G9 8-inch Android tablet sells for $299.99 for the 16GB model, while the Turbo 256GB model, quite a lot of storage for a tablet, is priced not much more at $369.99 sporting a more conventional hard disk rather than the flash drive that the 16GB model uses. 

So how else is Archos going to separate from the pack of Android players? TerBlanche says it already has. 

“Last year at CES there were about a hundred manufacturers who said they were going to bring tablets to market, but that number dwindled to 15,” he said, though there were more introductions at this year’s show. 

Along with his company’s design and manufacturing connections, TerBlanche says Archos is one of only ten brands that account for 85% of all the Android tablets being sold. Of those ten, Archos is one of only eight that are Google-certified. 

Among other things, the certification means Archos tablets are preloaded with Android Market and Google apps and the company is among those first in line to offer the latest Google software. “We’re a tier one partner with Google and that means we’ll have Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, available on February 1,” says TerBlanche. 

Price is another area Archos is ready to compete in. “We have really good relationships with our suppliers in China and we know how to get the best deal,” says TerBlanche. 

Surprisingly, he says the introduction of Amazon’s low cost, $199 Amazon Kindle Fire, has helped Archos: "We’re happy to compete on price and features, we can do that."