A $99 Tablet? A “Tough Pill to Swallow” for the U.S.?
photo by firm-guide.com
The $99 Capsule? No, not that kind of a pill. The U.S. market may have a “tough pill to swallow” if the $99 Tablet isn’t going to make it to the U.S.!
There’s good news and there’s bad new when it comes to the $99 tablet …
Good news is that a reliable source leaked the information that Acer (fourth in the PC maker chain) was going to market a $99 tablet in 2013.
Bad news is it might not be released in USA because Acer is going after the Chinese market where high prices for tablets are not something that the average person in China could afford. This is not really likely though, because Acer has applied to the FCC for certification in US.
The big players in the tablet market are:
- Apple –iPad, and mini iPad – $499 + $329
- Google – Nexus 10 tablet – $499.
- Amazon – Kindle Fire HD – $299.
(regular prices are shown)
There have been rumors for a long time, that another maker Asus is working with Google to also develop a Nexus version of a $99 tablet.
Industry experts are asking how low can the tablet price go? If we look back at other electronics, the trend is always for lower and lower priced products. Take the DVD player for example. When launched they sold for hundreds of dollars and now you can pick one up for as low as $19.99. Think about laptops when they first came out they were priced in the thousands, now you can get a nice model under $500 just about anywhere.
You don’t need to be an industry expert to predict that the price of tablets will drop in the next little while. Apparently we will see tablets under $50 in the near future.
It is amusing to note that the chairman of Acer, JT Wang, was quoted as recently as 18 months ago saying that he thought the tablet was a fad and would pass quickly.
Here is a very technically informative YouTube video from AEGIndia:
The new Acer $99 tablet is expected to have a 7-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600, and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. With the right price, it may mean that tablets can start to take hold in parts of the world where their use is now almost non-existent. Unlike the US, people in most countries would consider a tablet a luxury that they cannot afford, but an inexpensive tablet could change all that.
One American blogger stated that he would be happier “owning a 45 dollar product which my pals in Africa can afford to chat back with me on, than I am with an $850 device which I play solitaire on”. That says it all.
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