Following Apple's unveiling of the long-awaited iPad yesterday, hardware vendor MSI has revealed that its upcoming Android tablet, which was first shown at CES this year, will debut in the second half of 2010 for $500.

The MSI tablet is built on NVIDIA's Tegra SoC and has a ten-inch touchscreen display. If reports about Apple's A4 are accurate, Tegra's Cortex A9 should put the MSI tablet on equal footing with the iPad in raw computing power.

Based on information about the current prototype, it's clear that the company has been working on some customizations for the Android software platform to adapt it to the larger tablet form factor. It's not yet clear, however, if Android is really well-suited to the higher-resolution display. Key functionality like the onscreen keyboard will have to be adjusted, for one. It's unlikely that an Android-based computing experience will be able to rival the refinement of Apple's user interface, but Android does offer a number of critical advantages, like full support for multitasking, that will give the MSI a solid chance in the market.

In related news, Michael Dell says that his company's 5-inch Android tablet will be ready in "in a few months" and will sell for just over $1,000. It has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 5MP camera, WiFi and 3G connectivity, and Android 1.6. At more than twice the price of the MSI tablet and the iPad, the 5-inch device seems like it might be tough to sell without a carrier subsidy.