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A couple days ago, we heard rumours that Asus might be prepping a super-cheap Nexus tablet around the £70 price range. Today, the rumourmongers are full of talk that Acer is also planning on getting in on the cut-price tablet action, with a super-cheap 7-incher to go toe-to-toe with Amazon and Asus in the budget slate wars.
The Wall Street Journal is quoting “a person with direct knowledge of the project” (as it always is) saying that Acer will launch a super-cheap tablet, named the Iconia B1, early next year. It’s claimed to have a 7-inch, 1024×600 screen, powered by a 1.2GHz processor; operating system unnamed, but Android of some description would be a pretty safe bet. The WSJ is saying that it’s the same device pictured on a Serbian forum earlier this month, so if those are anything to go by, the only design flair on display is a garish primary-coloured band round the edges.
In any case, it looks like things will be heating up in the budget tablet market, with Amazon’s budget Fire tablet looking to come under heavy pressure early next year. I for one won’t be complaining — increased competition is all for the good for us consumer bods. The move also shows a return for Acer to its budget roots, and kinda a last throw of the dice for a company that’s been quite badly elbowed out of the tablet market. Now, if they could just sort out the bad styling and god-awful customer service…[Wall Street Journal and Benchmark]
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Blimey! It just gets better and better! I hope smartphones also get cheaper with their parts and flexi-screens in near future.
Tablets are taking over from the net books race to the cheapest price then. What a shame.
Race to cheapest price? netbook still cost over £200! Ill stick with my Q88 tablet + 4400mah replacement batterypack i think.
Whoah a whole £200 for a PC?!
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/16/tablets-join-the-long-race-to-the-bottom/
Interesting article IMO.
“a garish primary-coloured band round the edges.”
Er… what? What’s so garish about a colour accent? What would be garish is a device that was entirely one garish colour that clashed with a white face and had a lanyard button.
Yeah. That blue isn’t garish. I think it adds a touch of distinct style.
I’ve really gone off tablets but a decent one for £70 might swing me. As long as it’s got Google apps.
Looks like I found my kitchen tablet..
Haha, exactly!
thing is acer have never made decent quality hardware, their laptops are abysmal
Their products have got better, but their customer service is still utterly terrible
no i actually had to fix a fairly recent acer on friday, theyre still pretty badly made! although that said toshiba used to be good, these days theyre not much better than an advent/packard bell
Looks like Archos is already selling an 8 inch tablet for £49: http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/archos-80-cobalt-tablet-8-8gb-wifi-tesco-instore-49-half-price-1422066?page=3#comments
yeah but archos tabs never get any support, im not quite sure why that is though theyre cheaply made and priced to match but they arent actually that bad (i suppose you could always make your own rom but some parts of that arent that easy, like making the kernel the best it can be, unless youre a true linux guru it isnt easy)