Average selling price of tablets drops 21% in three months
Report: Slabs for the masses as ASP drops to £250
Posted in Management, 8th June 2012 13:41 GMT
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The average price of a tablet computer dropped 21 per cent in the first three months of 2012 - making $386 (£250) the average amount that customers pay for a slab.
Figures compiled by IMS research show the striking drop, which the tracker company attributed almost entirely to Apple.
Apple's price cut on its iPad 2 model in March - it pushed the price down to $399 from $499 after the release of the third-gen iPad - brought average prices down because of Apple's huge market share.
Apple's repricing put pressure on its competitors too, forcing competitive price-cutting among its high-end rivals.
In a cutting description of innovation in the tablet market, IMS analyst and report author Gerry Xu commented: “There are few innovations from vendors to differentiate their tablets; low price seems to be the major factor to attract consumers to buy tablets other than iPads."
Xu added that the price drop was putting strain on vendors who were struggling to balance performance and profitability with a low price.
At the lower end of the spectrum, Acer managed to produce an Android tablet for £130 - the Iconia Tab A110 out later this summer.
The Iconia Tab is built on Nvidia's quadcore Tegra 3 processor, a chipset that could power a generation of super cheap new Android tabs.
The tablet market is the fastest growing in the tech sector, but sales dropped in Q1 2012, as the graph above illustrates, after the fall-off from the Christmas period. Notably iPad 3 sales actually tailed off last month in Europe. ®
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COMMENTS
Re: Boy's Toys
I call my tf101 a toy. But then I call my main computer a box and my graphics tablet a cat bed, so... yeah.
I don't get the whole problem with grown men having "toys". To assume that adults can never have anything to enjoy is a very childish way to view the world. To be an adult means knowing when you can let go and simply enjoy life - and play with your toys.
Where's my £100 netbook then?
Is it just me or have netbook prices been heading north lately?
Re: About time too
My wife recently got an Asus Transformer Prime. It is really, really good. The addition of a keyboard "transforms" the usability.
It obviously isn't suitable for software development, graphic design or other specialist work, but for normal everyday computing it leaves very few boxes unticked.
Re: About time too - @Mikel
So what compiler does it support? What debugger does it support? What revision control system does it support? CVS? Clearcase? MKS on a tablet?
Can I actually write a kernel driver or some low level network code on it while on a plane from LHR to EWR (the slow-boat 757 which drags its feet for nearly 9 hours but has sockets even in cattle class)?
Well, not it does not.
Managing servers != development
Office work != development
Ssh != development
FTP != development
Ad naseum.
It is a nice consumer toy, it is a nice office work toy, it can even be a nice sysadmin toy, but a developer's toy it _DOES_ _NOT_ make. So while it can do about 66% of my work - office + syadmin (which I still do aplenty of each) it cannot do the remaining 33% where I have to write actual real code and do it in the gaps between meetings, on trains, planes and other places where I want a portable gadget. So for work I will still stick to a laptop (I may get a tablet for a car stereo/entertainment fronted at some point).
Yeah, I know, I am a caveman. People in developed countries who do powerpoint are not supposed to be writing code too. So I will stick to my caveman luddite attitude and use my laptop instead :)
That assumes anyone will buy an MS tablet. Given MS history with tablets they will be doing well to match RIMs Playbook sales.
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