14 DAY TRIAL // Not so long ago, we told you about Intel’s grand plans of spawning the market with ultra-cheap $99 / €72 Windows tablets. But if you thought that was a bargain, Chinese company Emdoor will surprise you by pushing things even further.
According to them, the above estimate applies to high-end models. Yes, you heard us right. The company has recently unveiled its upcoming new product roadmap, which includes low-cost 7, 8 and 10-inch Windows tablets, PadNews reports.
So, according to the document, as soon as this summer, we could end up seeing $99 / €72 tablets with build-in 3G arrive from Emdoor. And here comes the interesting part. At some point, we will see Wi-Fi only tablets be made available on the market with prices as low as $60 / €44.
Of course, you shouldn’t get your hopes up. If you want premium devices, like the upcoming Lenovo ThinkPad 10 tablet, which comes with full HD display, the latest Bay Trail chip architecture and LTE, you’ll still have to pay the big bucks, with prices revolving around 1,000 / €725.
So a cheap Emdoor tablet will arrive with a 7-inch screen, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Granted, these specifications are barely capable of sustaining the Windows operating system and let you access a few apps, games and movies.
The super low-cost tablets will probably be powered by Intel’s new low-cost, low-power Bay Trail chips for tablets. As you might well know, Microsoft has recently announced its decision of providing Windows free of charge for those device manufacturers developing tablets under 9 inches.
Some low-end Android tablets have been selling pretty well in recent years and now that the development of Windows tablets won’t cost manufacturers more than Android ones do, the market is expected to be spawned with a lot of dirt cheap Windows tablets too. It’s a whole new era for Microsoft.
What sets these upcoming cheap Windows tablets apart from their Android counterparts is that they run on x86 processors and they ca run fully fledged desktop Windows apps.
So in case the slates have an HDMI or USB port, users can easily snap a keyboard, mouse or attach a second display and use the tablet as an alternate Windows desktop computer.
However, a caveat remains. Most of the popular apps for Android and iOS haven’t yet been made available for Windows devices, so Microsoft needs to speed things up in this department, if it expects its super-cheap tablets to sell well.
