The Hewlett-Packard Touchpad sold like proverbial hotcakes when the electronics maker slashed the price from $ 499 to $ 99. Now Lenovo is entering the market with a tablet priced at what it hopes is the sweet spot: $ 200.
Lenovo just launched the IdeaPad Tablet A1 running Android 3.1. The new tablet features a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core mobile processor for high-speed multitasking and web browsing. Adobe Flash Player is built in for gaming, and the device is touting low power consumption for longer battery life.
The A1 weighs just over a pound and a half. It comes pre-loaded with more than 40 apps from the likes of Amazon.com, Adobe Systems, Electronic Arts, Rovio and DataViz. Some of the notable apps are Angry Birds, the Kindle e-book reader, and Documents To Go.
Pricing Not the Only Factor
“There’s no question that price matters, but what we learned from HP — who discounted a $ 500 tablet to $ 100 — is that people like $ 500 tablets that sell for $ 100. That’s all you can take away from that,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis, speaking from the IFA show in Germany.
He noted that $ 200 tablets already exist — consumers can buy them at Walgreen’s, but few do. As Greengart sees it, consumers looking for tablets want high quality. That, he said, is because a tablet isn’t a device that most consumers need. Rather, it’s something they want. And if a tablet is a want rather than a need, consumers aren’t going to buy a tablet that doesn’t live up to their expectations.
“I have not looked at the Lenovo tablet, so I don’t know if it will live up to people’s expectations as to what a tablet ought to be. But price alone is not enough,” Greengart said. “Apple has done such a great job creating a…
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