Lenovo To Offer $200 Budget Tablet

First time accepted submitter khellendros1984 writes "Amazon's not the only big-name company planning on a budget-level tablet release; Lenovo recently announced their Ideapad A1 tablet as competition. It includes a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, along with other features more commonly seen on higher-priced tablets, such as dual cameras, bluetooth, GPS, wifi, and a MicroSD slot. Is this the start of the Android tablet price avalanche?"

Compromised

[gilesjuk]

Except it's a 7 inch tablet with a widescreen ratio screen. So when holding in portrait it looks silly, too narrow and too tall.

These compromises are why they get overlooked.

Every week...

[ryanmcdonough]

I see news articles saying "Sub $200 tablet from (Big Vendor) due soon" then it turns out to be vaporware. Sick of these companies never following through.

Re:Every week...

[jmorris42]

They already announced they aren't following through. Slashdot editors can't read. The article says the $249 model is the least expensive model intended to ship to the US. Doubt the low end model will make it to much of the 1st world.

Good first step though, put a decent tablet out at non-apple prices. The HP disaster proved product will fly off shelves at $99. I suspect they would have moved briskly at $199, i.e. selling out in days instead of the gone before most people even heard the news of the demise, selling out so fast they still had ads up on CNN after they were all gone. The trick is the costs of production need to drop just a smidge more and the manufacturers have to be willing to accept consumer electronics margins instead of Apple margins.

Get a really usable tablet/ereader on shelves at a reliable (not firesale/closeout, loss leader, etc) and they willl become viable. For those who don't need a laptop and need more than a smartphone provides. Apparently that niche is fairly large.

Adroid tablet price avalanche ? Oh yes! please...

[nomad63]

Since the time overpriced tablets hit the stores, on-line and off, I can't keep wondering why people fee the urge, buying these overpriced gizmos. The netbook, which was on the same boat few years ago, is now, obtainable around $200 price point, which gives you at least twice the CPU power in most cases, a full keyboard, multiple expansion ports, more memory and storage space, alas, no touch screen. But knowing the price point of a touchscreen, sacrificing all other advantages of a netbook over a tablet, should be able to compensate the cost of a touchscreen addition and then some. So, why people are buying tablet at 4-500 dollars price points is beyond my understanding. It is time that some sensible company to get a clue that, the yahoos of this world got their overpriced gizmos and the rest of us will not give them any of our hard earned money for a sub-par device, just because it is the hot thing to have while sipping your coffee at Starbucks. Kudos to Amazon, Lenovo and whoever else comes up with cheap but equally powerful, if not more, tablets to the market.

Re:A cheapo tablet is going to be a compromise

[jo_ham]

Cool story bro.

By "rake off a nice think 30 points" you mean "handle all the hosting, payment processing and promotion" for the content and software in the store, then sure that's "raking in a nice thick 30 points". Those Apple statements you like to 'get your figures' mention specifically that the iTunes Store is not a large source of profit for apple (not even in the same ballpark as their hardware), so your whole post just looks like uninformed nonsense.

So, I will say it again - if Apple is making an outrageously large profit on the iPad then where are the many, many companies would can undercut the iPad with the same specs?

You say that Apple is making "at least 50 points" on the iPad, so where are the competitors coming in at even $50 to 100 less? They just do not exist, because they have realised that they simply cannot do it right now - the closest we had was the Xoom (in terms of hardware specs) to the iPad and it was pretty much exactly the same price (and a little bit more expensive) than the iPad.

We'll be generous and say that you can put that slight imbalance (that the iPad was still cheaper for 5 of the 6 models of iPad you could buy) down to economies of scale, but even then the Xoom was only equivalent in price.

If an iPad-comparable tablet could be sold for $100+ less or more by someone else, it would already be on the shelves - it's not rocket science.

So, either we accept that *every* company (including those trying to lure people away from the iPad and buy their tablet) just won't budge on a "50 point" profit on their unproven-but-upstart tablet competitor and remain confident that costing more than an iPad will really encourage people to buy, *or* tablets with the iPad's specs cost a little more to make than armchair quarterbacks on slashdot seem to think they do.