Now the shrinking PC market has forced Intel to attempt to create small, power-efficient, and relatively inexpensive chips to power the mobile phones and tablets that are directly cannibalizing the market for PCs.The most surprising and extreme example of this fundamental shift in strategy was new Intel CEO Brian Krzanich’s recent declaration that Intel chips will be inside tablet computers that cost less than $100—to arrive by the US holiday season.
This was apparently such an important announcement that Krzanich said it a second time, after his first declaration failed to elicit applause from the audience at the Intel Developer Forum.Creating a usable wholesale android tablets that costs less than $100 is not an easy thing to do. In Shenzhen, China, no-name manufacturers churn out Android tablets at that price point, but they have yet to make much of an impact in western markets, on account of their poor performance compared to more expensive, but more usable, alternatives like Google’s Nexus 7 and the iPad mini.
I’ve
tried ultra-cheap tabletsaimed at emerging markets, like India’s Aakash
2, and while they’re just barely usable for basic tasks like browsing
the web, they are not the sort of thing most consumers would pay money
for, even in India, where the Aakash 2 is already being superseded by
the much more powerful Aakash 4. (Where the Aakash 3 went is anyone’s
guess.)
Suneet Tuli, CEO of Datawind,
maker of the Aakash 2 tablet, says that the company’s next generation
tablet will sell for around the same price point, or $50, “so there’s no
reason Intel can’t get below $99.”But one reason that China’s and
India’s ultra-cheap tablets cost so little is that the processors inside
them cost as little as $3 to $5, says Tuli. Intel’s newer mobile chips,
on the other hand, can cost as much as $60.
For a manufacturer to create a $99 wholesale android tablets,
where much of the cost is in the touchscreen display, they’re probably
going to have to use an older and cheaper Intel chip, perhaps the same
one to makeMotorola’s Razr i, which came out in October 2012 and was the
first Android smartphone to be powered by an Intel chip.If Intel is
selling $20-$30 microprocessors for cheap tablets, that’s a far cry from
the expensive, high- margin chips on which its business was built. And
yet, since the company currently has almost no presence in the mobile
market, anything it can sell in this market represents untapped revenue
for Intel. rD3DDd2f
The company seems to have
finally realized that it is facing a classic instance of the Innovator’s
Dilemma—as its traditional PC business is disrupted by less-expensive
competitors, Intel must get into that market. The results could further
devastate PC sales, but Intel has no choice—wholesale android tablets, smartphones and laptops running on processors from its arch-nemesis ARM are already taking over personal computing.
Tablet
shipments will exceed PC shipments before the year is out because
consumers continue to favor mobile devices over personal computers,
according to new research from IDC.The study was on the worldwide smart
connected device market, which includes PCs, wholesale android tablets,
and smartphones. PC shipments are still expected to beat out tablets
for the full year, but will fall short of tablets during the fourth
quarter. Tablets are expected to outsell PCs overall by 2015.
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