14 DAY TRIAL // For all its advantages and shortcomings, if there is anything that Apple's iPad, along with its more than 1,000,000 sold copies in the first month, showed is that the market is ready to accept media slates. This prompted most PC makers to devise slates of their own, not just rugged, specialized devices, but also the same type of media tablet that the iPad passes for. Now, it seems VIA plans to join the fray, with a very intriguing offer.
There are no specifics but it appears that VIA may be wanting to play the affordability card even more aggressively than all the other players. The iPad is, currently, selling for roughly $500, or more. Knowing this, companies like MSI, HP and ASUS planned to bring out slates with a wider feature set (including Flash support and multitasking) that cost a similar amount, or slightly less. Quite encouraging is also IDC's forecast that the total shipments of such electronics will increase by a factor of six by 2014.
VIA, on the other hand, plans to be more aggressive in terms of pricing. Instead of targeting a $500 or $400 price point, it hopes to power tablets available for as little as $100 and at most $150. Unfortunately, there is no information, at this time, on what kind of performance and battery life end-users can expect such cheap products to have. Still, considering that about five different models are slated to debut during the second half of the year, there should, at the very least, be some variety. Google's Android OS will be pre-installed on all of them.
“The tablet market has been legitimated by Apple,” said Richard Brown, vice president of marketing at Via. “Android is bringing a lot of diversity to the market. There are different sizes and different looks and feels.” Brown also stated that, while ARM would be at the heart of the upcoming slates, VIA also holds a license, from Intel, for manufacturing of X86 CPUs.