Lenovo to ship a 23-inch tablet this year? Update: nope.

Update: It appears that this not true after all. "As you know, it is usually not Lenovo's practice to talk about unannounced products, but in this case I will tell you that we have no plans to introduce a 23-inch tablet," a Lenovo spokesperson told ZDNet. The original story is below.

Lenovo is building a 23-inch tablet, and it's likely to arrive before the end of this year. Speaking at this year's Gadget Show Live, William Cai, senior specialist in marketing for Lenovo, said he believes there is a problem with multiple screens in the home, and a larger tablet could help solve it.

"We think that there is potential for a 23-inch tablet," Cai told TechRadar. "We'd have to take care of battery life and we are working to get the weight down. It's obviously not for full mobility use, but it could be moved from room to room in the house and used with a full keyboard, or as a television. Or you could lay it on a table top and use it for family games. We're hoping that we can launch it later this year."

The idea comes from Lenovo's All-in-One line of PCs, but the interesting part is that this is not just a research project: it appears the company is quite serious on pushing the device. At the very least, the company will be differentiating itself from its competitors; pretty much everyone, including Lenovo, is developing a tablet with a screen size ranging from 5-inch to 10-inch.

Lenovo has already launched a normal-sized tablet in China. The 10.1-inch device, powered by a 1.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM, is slated to go on sale worldwide in June 2011.

Frankly, we think this 23-inch device will have to be lighter than your typical 15-inch or 17-inch laptop to be useful in the home. That's going to be very difficult to achieve with a 23-inch tablet. We're thinking how heavy a 23-inch monitor is and we don't see how Lenevo could possibly make a lighter computer, but we'll reserve further judgment till the full specifications are out.