We'd like you to turn on your disbelief system while you read this, because we have a couple of related pieces of information that definitely require you to take with the proverbial "grain of salt". If salt is not good for your health, you may substitute rice or sand. Anyway, remember all that talk about ASUS producing a $99 Android tablet?
Just the other day, the talk had shifted to a 7 inch tablet coming from ASUS in the $129-$149 price range
. What happened to the $99 price tag? According to Taiwan-based supply chain manufacturers, ASUS decided against launching the device at $99 because it did not want to compete against the Google Nexus 7
. Why? Because, as many of you know, ASUS is the tech company that produces the Google Nexus 7 tablet and it was worried about cannibalizing sales.
But that doesn't mean that a new 7 inch Android tablet for $99 isn't coming to the U.S.. As we told you the other day, Acer recently visited the FCC with the Acer Iconia B1
and while the specs led us to call it a low-cost tablet, at the time we did not know how low it would be priced. According to the same Taiwan based supply chain manufacturers that told us about ASUS, we are told that the Acer Iconia B1 will be priced at $99 in the U.S. Of course, this means you will have to make do with a 7 inch tablet with a resolution of 1024 x 600. If that resolution sounds familiar to you on a 7 inch screen, that is because it is the exact same specs for the 7 inch panel on the ancient BlackBerry PlayBook,
which results in a pixel density of 170ppi. There is said to be a 1.2GHz processor under the hood of the Acer model, and with a SIM card slot, there is speculation that the tablet will offer cellular connectivity. Despite its shortcomings, if it comes with Android 4.1 installed, the $99 price point might tempt some Google Nexus 7, Amazon Kindle Fire
and Apple iPad mini
buyers.Gosh darn it! There we go again, getting ahead of ourselves. Better reach for that salt now
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