"These devices were not intended to be a dramatic change in terms of hardware from the existing Galaxy Tabs because frankly we feel that the hardware on the existing Galaxy Tabs is still extremely competitive and still industry leading," said Travis Merrill, director of tablet marketing at Samsung, during a media briefing.

New on these tablets are microSD slots, which provides expandable storage of up to 32GB. A new IR blaster turns the tablets into smart remotes to control home entertainment systems.

The tablets also feature new Samsung technology called AllShare Play, which allows multimedia content to be shared between tablets, smartphones, TVs and other devices that are compatible with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), a digital-content sharing standard. The Galaxy Tab 2 tablets can also stream multimedia or mirror images on TVs.

Samsung officials could not comment on when the tablets would ship in other countries.

Samsung was the third largest tablet vendor worldwide behind Apple and Amazon in the fourth quarter last year, . Gartner this week estimated this year, with Apple's iPad dominating the market, and Amazon and Samsung being the top Android tablet vendors.