$299 tablets for emerging markets

If you have a penchant for numbers and figures, then you might want to have $299 carve a place in your mind – this could very well be the magic number that tablet manufacturers are looking at where pricing is concerned for such devices in emerging markets. When we say emerging markets, we are looking at countries that have a high population, although the earning power is not all that great – China, India, Brazil and Indonesia would come into mind. Taiwan-based supply chain makers are moving in this direction, and just like feature phones that still make up the bulk of the market, it will be the bread and butter for many tablet manufacturers even if the iPad 2 reigns supreme as the “must have” tablet at the moment.

Of course, this is not to say that hardware development on the tablet front should be stunted, especially when Google recently rolled out their Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, alongside NVIDIA’s announcement of their powerful quad-core Tegra 3 processor. Will Apple’s upcoming iPad 3 be able to continue where the iPad 2 left off – which is right at the top of the tablet food chain, or will the emerging markets have a say in which is the best selling tablet, since Apple isn’t too concerned about the lower end of the food chain?