Tablet makers now have new reason to shift to the latest platform developed by Nvidia as the company claims that theoretically it would now be possible to have tablets running the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich for as low as $199. Nvidia is also targeting the release of Windows 8, which is going to be able to run on ARM based processors, thus allowing for low cost Windows tablets.
At the annual stockholders meeting held during the GPU Technology Conference last week, the graphics chip maker has announced the introduction of a new tablet platform for Android based devices code named Kai. Rob Csonger, the Vice President of Investor Relations at Nvidia gave an outline of how the company plans to unleash the full potential of the Tegra 3 quad core processor to deliver a tablet at a price rivaling that of the Kindle Fire by Amazon by the year end.
In an address to Nvidia shareholders, Csonger said that the strategy of the company is different from the previous year where it tried to expand into the tablet market and though some good tablets had been developed, they were priced a little higher than expected. The third generation Tegra SoC was released last November by the graphics chip maker and was first used in the EEE Pad Transformer Prime tablet-laptop convertible by Asus released in December. The device is currently priced at $499.
The Amazon Kindle Fire is priced at $199 and does not deliver very high performance, but has captured the current market trend and price bracket that consumers interested in, said Csonger. He added that as a consequence, the primary target of the company is to develop an Android Ice Cream Sandwich based tablet running on a quad core processor to be priced in the $199 segment. This will be possible thanks to the untapped potential of the Tegra 3 processor along with technologies recently developed which will considerably decrease the power requirements of the display as well as the use of low cost components to manufacture the tablet, he added.
With the anticipated release of the Microsoft’s next generation operating system, Windows 8 later this year, Csonger added that the company was excited about the prospective development opportunities for Tegra 3 based tablets for the new platform.
