Lenovo Heats up Price War With $199 IdeaPad Tablet

Lenovo announced a new $199 IdeaPad tablet with a 7-inch screen and Google's Android OS in response to the surge in necessitate for inexpensive tablets, the caller aforesaid on Thursday.

The IdeaPad A1 tablet weighs around 400 grams (0.88 pounds) and is under 0.5 inches (1.27 centimeters) thick, and will get over available in special starting around the end of Sept, said Nick Reynolds, executive director of global marketing at Lenovo. The tablet provides seven hours of battery life.

The tablet volition be among the cheapest 7-inch Android tablets obtainable from a top twist manufacturer. Many competitive products cost more $250. Acer last-place calendar month started merchant marine its 7-edge Iconia Tab A100 tablet for US$329, and Samsung's 7-inch Galaxy Tab screen sells for $279 through Amazon.com and Nestlin's Electronics.

"This is a very accessible price point starting at US$199," Reynolds same. Lenovo views the tablet as a companion to PCs, and a flat-growing price will open up demand for tablets, especially in emergent markets, Reynolds said.

Lenovo's parvenu tablet comes as prices for Android tablets shed in an effort to challenge the grocery store authorisation of Orchard apple tree's iPad 2, whose rock-steady $499 opening price has not changed since its launch earlier this twelvemonth. One of the freshman Android tablets, Samsung's 7-inch Galax Tab, went on sale late last twelvemonth through Verizon starting at $600 without a contract, and was considered overpriced. But Android tablet prices have unchaste. Unbranded tablets sell for as little as $100. Consumers last month scrambled to buy Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad tablet, which was priced starting at $99 in a fire sale after the company proclaimed information technology would catch selling webOS devices. Buyers' frenzy over the TouchPads was such that HP along Tues said it would constitute a final round of the devices and take in them gear up for sale in coming weeks.

Android tablet prices are down because the provider base is large while the demand is little, said David Daoud, research director at IDC. But at $199, Lenovo English hawthorn be willing to forgo profits in lieu of building consumer sentience around its tablets, Daoud aforesaid. That is a challenge other Android tablet makers have failed at with Apple holding a firm grip happening the market.

"The price level could set Lenovo in a very competitory position," Daoud said.

But Lenovo necessarily more help beyond a double-bass cost to succeed in the tablet market, Daoud said. Apple's iPad success comes from a adhesive set of hardware, software system and services, and Lenovo has to provide reasons beyond just hardware for people to buy its tablets, Daoud said. Lenovo earlier this year launched three tablets, including the ThinkPad Pad, for consumers and enterprises.

The A1 tablet runs happening Android 2.3, which is encrypt-named Gingerbread and used in smartphones. Lenovo's Reynolds declined to comment connected whether the pad would be upgraded to Android 3.x, code-titled Honeycomb, which has an interface designed specially for tablets. Lenovo's focussing is on the side by side version of Android, inscribe-named Ice Cream Sandwich, and Thomas More details around its plans for the OS will embody joint in the first or second fourth part next year, Reynolds said.

On the far side the OS, the A1 tablet has hardware plant in smartphones. The device runs on a chip armored with a single-core Cortex-A8 mainframe aim from Subdivision, which is old compared to the latest dual-core Cerebral cortex-A9 central processing unit found in umpteen new smartphones and tablets.

Other features include up to 32GB of storage and MicroSD and micro USB slots for expansible storage. The tablet has 2 cameras: unitary in the front and uncomparable in the back.

The tablet has a customized drug user interface and users can access applications through with Lenovo's App Shop and the Mechanical man Commercialize. The UI can embody tailor-made for quick access to specific applications. Lenovo is pre-loading an application called Social Touch, which provides a unified user interface for e-mail service and social network feeds. An offline GPS application allows users to navigate through maps without beingness connected to the Cyberspace.