What will a sub-$100 tablets on sale from Intel look like-priceangels.com

Creating a usable tablet that costs less than $100 is not an easy thing to do. In Shenzhen, China, no-name manufacturers churn out Android tablets on sale at that price point, but they have yet to make much of an impact in western markets, on account of their poor performance compared to more expensive, but more usable, alternatives like Google’s Nexus 7 and the iPad mini.

I’ve tried ultra-cheap tabletsaimed at emerging markets, like India’s Aakash 2, and while they’re just barely usable for basic tasks like browsing the web, they are not the sort of thing most consumers would pay money for, even in India, where the Aakash 2 is already being superseded by the much more powerful Aakash 4. (Where the Aakash 3 went is anyone’s guess.)

 

What will a sub-$100 10 inch tablet  from Intel look like? It would probably be a 7-inch tablet with relatively modest specifications, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be, for most consumers, more than good enough. And once a low-end tablet satisfies the average consumer’s need for modest tasks like watching videos, browsing the web, and communications, it has the potential to both satisfy a large portion of the market and also make tablets accessible to an ever-wider segment of the global population.

Suneet Tuli, CEO of Datawind, maker of the Aakash 2 tablet, says that the company’s next generation tablet will sell for around the same price point, or $50, “so there’s no reason Intel can’t get below $99.”But one reason that China’s and India’s ultra-cheap Android tablets on sale cost so little is that the processors inside them cost as little as $3 to $5, says Tuli. Intel’s newer mobile chips, on the other hand, can cost as much as $60.

For a manufacturer to create a $99 tablet, where much of the cost is in the touchscreen display, they’re probably going to have to use an older and cheaper Intel chip, perhaps the same one to makeMotorola’s Razr i, which came out in October 2012 and was the first Android smartphone to be powered by an Intel chip.The market for  tablets on sale is steadily growing and even outpacing the business of selling PCs, but consumers seem more interested in using their gadgets for entertainment than work or communication.

Tablet users spent 50% of their screen time on entertainment pastimes like games, movies and listening to music, according to new research from Gartner. People who own the most popular tablets made by Samsung and Apple AAPL +1.16%, also spend on average 30 minutes more per day on entertainment, than those who own other brands.d4f4sdA2a

Owners of tablets spend about a quarter of their screen time on communication activities such as email and visiting social media sites, 15% creating content such as videos or blogs, and 9% finding  information. Gartner’s survey was conducted in July 2013 and questioned 726 tablet owners in the U.S., U.K.. and Australia.

It also found that tablet users continue to use their devices primarily in the evening, between 7pm and 10pm. “This suggests the use of  Android tablets on sale  as companions to television viewing and other living-room activities,” said Gartner’s principle research analyst, Meike Escherich. “Smartphones are used more for ad hoc research or quick sessions on social media websites while on the move or engaged in another screen activity.”

The research also showed that consumers had become less concerned in the last few years about brand names when choosing a cheap tablets for kids , and more interested in price and quality. That may make entering the tablet market more feasible for vendors, but it also means they “need to be more precise” in communicating what sets their tablet apart from others, says Gartner’s research director Annette Jump.