14 DAY TRIAL // We have to admit the fact that the world is still far from having emerged victorious from the economic crisis, with some of its effects still very clear and present, and for this reason, people are a whole lot more careful when purchasing electronics goods, especially Internet tablets.
In fact, they care about the pricing so much that many give up on purchasing an iPad, Galaxy Tab or even some of the less-costly Android tablets out there and go directly for Chinese clones (or knock-offs), also known as white-box models, that deliver roughly the same design as the original tablets and a similar level of functionality, but at a much lower price point.
And the best example of such a type of consumer behavior comes from Amazon, where, as Digitimes reports, products coming directly from two Chinese vendors, Zenithink and Anhub, have managed to make it to the site's top 20 most popular products.
The companies sell a 10-inch tablet PC called ePad (Zenithink) and a 7-inch tablet (Anhub), both of which deliver roughly the same overall design as the iPad, as well as similar functions, while pricing is seriously more affordable, namely somewhere in the vicinity of US$259.99 for the 10-inch model, the 7 incher being even cheaper.
Of course, one might have to take into consideration that lower pricing has its risks, such as no service and warranty conditions, not to mentions lack of upgrade possibilities, but that hasn't stopped customer from going all out for these products.
Naturally, we might be talking about people who don't really care about advanced features and are only looking for basic, iPad-like functionality at a much lower price, but only time will tell whether this trend will continue to grow (eating away at the iPad's and Galaxy Tab's market shares), or whether it will eventually die out, people going for the more expensive, yet safer versions.