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That was the message from several of the speakers including Zigurd Medniks<\/a> who works with OEMs to adapt Android to a wide variety of devices and embedded systems. The reasoning is that the tablet form factor has a lower production cost than any other device design. Tablets will soon be really cheap to mass produce. Completion will drive the cost of screens and mobile CPUs down to commodity levels. Cheap components, a simple slab of plastic case, lack of moving parts and free open source OSs like Android, Chrome and MeeGo that OEM’s can tweak and modify mean low barriers of entry for device manufactures. Competition will drive the price of a capable tablet down to about $130 and possibly less. The price of connectivity may actually be a bigger issue than the cost of the hardware. I expect that these low cost tablets will be WiFi only devices connecting to the cloud intermittently at home and public hotspots.<\/p>\n
What will this new breed of tablets look like? They are likely to be smaller than the iPad. Another speaker, Dr. Phil Hendrix<\/a>, does mobile market research. His studies indicate that potential tablet buyers are evenly split between 7 and 10 inch screen sizes with a smaller but still significant number preferring 5 inch tablets.<\/p>\n
Yesterday’s “iPad and Tablets: Publishing and Entertainment” sessions at CTIA were an interesting experience. The main thing I took away from them is that some smart people with extensive mobile and computing industry experience believe tablets will be very big and will eventually largely replace netbooks and PCs. That was the message from several of the speakers including Zigurd Medniks who works with OEMs to adapt Android to a wide variety of devices and embedded systems. The reasoning is that … Continue reading