Monday, October 04, 2010

Off the Peg or a Designer Tablet Sir?

Ok would you buy a tablet from a High Street fashion retailer? Would you buy one from a cheap reseller?

Next the UK apparel retailer is now offering a 10in Android 2.1 tablet for £180. It comes with 8GB of Flash storage, a 1024 x 600screen, 1GHz ARM processor, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connectivity, USB ports , a Micro SD card slot, and a headphone socket. So why and how are the obvious questions?

Why is simple, why not when you have a strong retail presence a mail order arm and already sell much more than just clothes? How is also simple, in that it is just a rebadged of a far eat model, so is low risk and just a case of shifting the units. There will be a number of cheap and cheerful tablet offers in the lead up to Christmas and although the Next offer appears to be not so cheap and cheerful we think that it will not be alone for long.

It is somewhat ironic when LG announce the delay in their tablet so they can focus on their smartphone and more lucrative offer to compete with the iPhone that we have others wanting to have a slice of the tablet market. The question is whether customers want to buy a Next tablet 'off the peg' or would prefer a designer label Apple iPad, or a higher specification and practical Dell Streak or Samsung Galaxy, or a corporate BlackPad?

No comments: