Sales of low-cost tablets in Australia are soaring, while Intel is attempting to grab a bigger slice of the low-end market in the country.
New figures point to an "explosion" in sales of low cost media tablets in Australia, with analyst firm Telsyte estimating that 29 percent of tablets sold in Australia in 2013 cost less than $450.
While the iPad still accounts for a significant proportion of the market, sales of "media tablets" in Australia doubled last year according to Telsyte. The firm estimates 4.8 million media tablets were sold here last year.
Intel wants a bigger piece of the action at the cheap end of the tablet market, bringing tablet samples into Australia to show resellers and partners who might offer their own branded Intel tablets.
The first batch of samples were shown to partners in Australia several months ago, marking the first time tablets have been made part of Intel's local channel access program.
The move follows several years of work by Intel to forge links with key manufacturers in the China Tech Ecosystem (CTE) who can supply smaller orders. This should make it cheaper for Australian resellers to test-market their own branded tablets, said Intel's tablet category manager Corey Loehr.
"Before you had to order 20,000, 50,000 units. It required a lot of cash, a big investment," said Loehr. "The ability for partners to trial a small order quantity to see if demand is there is now possible."
The chip giant has a much-publicised goal of increasing the Intel tablet market to 40 million devices this year. A focus will now be on getting Intel chips into more cheaper tablets, where it has had poor coverage in devices less than $400.
"Our major focus is looking at price point these tablets have been purchased at and trying to get a quality product into each of those price points," Loehr told CRN. "We're going to be able to offer some products at lower price points than we've ever been able to before."
Part of that challenge will be to reduce the bill of materials (BOM) price for tablets with Intel's Bay Trail architecture. Intel has found itself in the headlines already this year over its efforts to reduce that cost for manufacturers. The introduction of Android tablets with Bay Trail this year will also bring 64-bit capability to the platform (though apps won't necessarily won't take advantage of this yet).
Telsyte estimates tablets less than $450 will account for 50 percent of sales by 2018. One in five media tablet owners has two or more of the devices.
"People are now buying their second and some buying their third tablet. Those buyers now have a better sense of what they didn't get in that first cheap tablet," said Loehr.
According to Telsyte, Apple sales were 2.6 million last year compared with 1.9 million for Android media tablets.
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