Thursday, December 20, 2012

New low price levels for tablets

Wow, that went fast! I was in my local PC store last night, and looked over their tablets. They had about five different brands on display (no iPads, they used to have those prominently, I'm guessing they're sold out), and all of them were at or under £200! (Which means similar numbers in $ in the US, or slightly above). This was Nexus, and Samsung Galaxy, as well as a couple of less known brands.

This is impressive, it was only a few months ago the Nexus Seven broke all rules by being a quality 7-inch tablet and selling for only 200. (Well, that's disregarding the Kindle Fire, but that's a crippled tablet unless you hack it.) And now suddenly they all are at this level, which is not far from half of the typical price half a year ago.

To be sure this is a bit ahead of the natural price development, since Amazon and Google has started a real price war by selling their tablets at cost, not making a cent on them unless the customer spends money in their store on the tablet.

Apple is actually the only brand I know of which is not knuckling under, so far holding the iPad Mini at over 300. But they have a unique and uniquely beloved interface and digital wares ecosystem, so they still manage to be around the number 1 tablet on the market.

It has to be tough for brands like Samsung, they are already losing money on big TVs, now the time has come for tablets too? But they can't just stand their ground, the battle is on for future market share, and 'everything' is at stake.

3 comments:

Bruce said...

After reading your post, I checked some of my favorite online places here in the US. The prices are amazing. All the 7" Android tablets were around or under $200.00.

Except, sadly the two year old HTC Flyer. It was overpriced when it was introduced, and it is still overpriced. I like a lot of what HTC has been trying to do with Android phones and tablets. It's too bad they haven't been more successful.

Looking at 10" tablets, everybody seems to be holding the line at $400.00.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Right, I suspected it would be the same in the US. (It does happen that we are "ahead" in price development, as is apparently the case in mobile contracts, but it is rare.)

I was not even aware HTC had made a tablet. I don't think HTC is big on this side of the Atlantic. (But I have heard praise of their phones before.)

I suspect $400 is roughly the current production price for a ten-inch tablet.

TC [Girl] said...

Just read this.