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they are not the sort of thing most consumers would pay money for, even in India, where the Aakash 2 is already being superseded by the much more powerful Aakash 4.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.

A huge boost to wholesale android tablets manufacturers -Priceangels.com

PC sales have slumped in the last two years as consumers abandon laptops for touchscreen wholesale android tablets, sales of which have grown exponentially since the release of the iPad in 2010.The changing consumer habits have come as a huge boost to tablet manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung, while creating trouble for companies exposed to the PC market, like Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

IDC predicted that the short-term boost at Christmas would lead tablet sales to overtake PCs, although for 2013 and 2014 as a whole PCs will continue to outsell tablets. In 2015 it expects tablets to outsell PCs and for this shift to be permanent.Tablets will make up 14.6pc of global sales of “smart connected devices” – PCs, wholesale android tablets and smartphones – in 2013, while PCs will account for 20.2pc. By 2015 this will have been reversed to 15.9pc tablets and 15pc PCs, and by 2017 the balance will be 16.5pc tablets and 13pc PCs.

IDC claimed that tablet growth is likely to slow down as smartphones with large screens become the norm. Sales of these so-called “phablets” – a combination of the word “phone” and “tablet” - are expected to eat into sales of smaller tablets."At a time when the smartphone and tablet markets are showing early signs of saturation, the emergence of lower-priced devices will be a game-changer," said IDC's Megha Saini."Introducing new handsets and tablet devices at cheaper price points along with special initiatives like trade-in programs from Apple and BestBuy will accelerate the upgrade cycle and expand the total addressable market overnight."Microsoft has been trying to hit Apple hard to get people to buy Surface tablets rather than iPads.dfdWG4fa 

There's currently a ubiquitous TV ad campaign showing off what Microsoft believes are the superiority of its tablets over iPads, such as a keyboard, although the ad doesn't mention that the keyboard typically adds to the price of a Surface.Tablets have been around in one form or another for many years, but it's only in the last few that they have really made an impact in the computing world. We've looked at how you can use a tablet productively in class and shown you easy ways to keep your tablet in your kitchen, mount it in your bedroom, and even incorporate one into your car's dashboard. 

Chipmaker Intel today unveiled the hardware it hopes will help it establish a much-needed foothold in the burgeoning tablet market.Getting more Intel chips inside tablets is increasingly important for Intel as sales of desktop and laptop PCs — a market Intel has dominated for decades — dwindle, while cheap tablets are forecast to sell in ever larger numbers.Intel is hoping to persuade tablet makers to swap out the ARM-based low power Risc chips that sit inside the majority of tablets today for the Intel Bay Trail platform - specifically its Atom Z3000 series of System on a Chips (SoCs).

The Z3000 is Intel's second recent attempt to break into the mainstream tablet market, after its earlier Atom SoCs – inside its Clover Trail and Clover Trail+ platforms - only made it into a relatively small number of tablets.On the face of it the Z3000 series addresses some of the criticisms levelled at Clover Trail, primarily it's faster and allows tablets to run for longer off the same battery.