It used to be that Android was king of the low-priced tablet game: with even 2012′s iPad models continuing to fetch premium prices, Apple’s in no hurry to discount its hardware, whereas Android has no problem filling that sub-$300 space with plenty of tablets. Granted, there was a lot of crap down there mixed in with the few really good values, but at least affordable tablets were out there for those who wanted them. Now that Windows has emerged as an affordable tablet platform(thanks largely to the RT edition of Microsoft’s OS), we’ve seen a glut of similarly low-priced tablet hardware. But can it go even lower than the $100 price point Windows tablets have flirted with in the past? Sure enough, this month at the Hong Kong Trade Development Council’s Electronics Fair a couple of cheaper-than-ever Windows tablets are saying “hello,” coming in at just $65 a piece.14 Comments
Make no mistake: at this price point we’re looking at some very limited hardware. There are at least two players looking to release models at this $65 point, Ployer and Emdoor. Of the eight-inch Ployer model, little is known besides the presnce of an Intel chip, while the Emdoor EM-I8170 has been confirmed to sport a seven-inch 1024 x 600 panel, quad-core Intel Atom Bay Trail SoC, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. That’s not a lot to work with, but for $65, it’s hard to complain.
And before you (understandably) start arguing that tablet makers aren’t doing themselves any favors by trying to win customers with low prices and low prices alone, keep in mind that the difference between $65 and $100 can be a big one for shoppers in the developing world – a market that continues to be key for the future of mobile platforms. Now we just want to see a Lumia 2520 in the vein of a Lumia 630.
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