Amazon will be releasing a $50 tablet with a 6-inch screen. The price of the new device is half the price of the cheapest Fire tablet from Amazon. According to Wall Street Journal, the plan is to release the new device just in time before the holidays.
Amazon is said to be struggling to sell its pricier devices so it is hoping to potentially attract buyers who would be happy with devices that can do simple tasks such as video-streaming or Amazon shopping. However, the market should start asking what Amazon must have sacrificed in the tablet's features to come up with a cheap price. Cheaper tablets come with inferior screen quality, durability or battery life.
Given the above instance, the lower price may not be enough to attract many buyers. According to Market Watch, a Google research finds that most people use tablets to perform tasks like checking emails, playing games, social networking, listening to music and watching videos. For those who love to watch videos, the $50 device might fail to deliver superior audio with its mono speaker, whereas other tablets have stereo speakers.
In addition, JP Bouchard, an analyst at IDC, said that the biggest issue of that tablet is the growing market of smartphones with the same size.
He said, "The value of a tablet that isn't a phone, competing against a 6-inch phone...is almost nonexistent."
On the other hand, Eric Smith, an analyst at Strategy Analytics said that, "You could pay an extra $30 and get something of much higher quality on a Black Friday deal."
Amazon is not the first to release tablets with a price as low as $50. Tablets of that size or larger, such as the NeuTab N7 or the Tagital T7X, are already selling for $50 or less. So Amazon's low price may not really be that attractive.
