Ocean Chen, Taipei; Joseph Tsai

 

Tablet PC players have recently started to drop their tablet PC prices to attract consumers, especially 7-inch models as the machines can easily attract first-time buyers with their smaller size and US$100-150 cheaper prices compared to 10-inch models, according to sources from tablet PC vendors.

Since 7-inch models do not have a product like iPad as a price baseline, vendors can only gradually adjust their prices to find the sweet-spot for the market's price point.

Therefore, 7-inch tablet PCs' average pricing has already dropped from US$450 originally to about US$300 currently, while 10-inch models have also been seeing a similar price strategy.

With Amazon launching its Kindle Fire with a price of US$199, several brand vendors such as ViewSonic, have also released new tablet PCs to meet the new price point. ViewSonic recently launched its ViewPad 7e with a price less than NT$6,000 (US$199). The model features a 7-inch touchscreen, 1GHz processor, 512MB memory, 4GB storage space, Wi-Fi and Android 2.3.