Rivals Can Beat iPads Only With Rock-Bottom Pricing

Here’s some advice to tablet companies hoping to beat the iPad features: stop wasting your time. The only alternative is to drop prices ridiculously low, like $300, says a Wall Street observer.

“The Android tablets aren’t as good because of the ecosystem,” Windsor said. “They’ve got to be cheap.” The perfect price seems to be about $300, a figure that until recently has also been out of reach for competitors. But the ultra-cheap tablets by HTC, Motorola or Samsung could spur what the analyst terms as “meaningful volumes.” All of that hinges on tablet screens – the most expensive component, he said.

If Samsung – maker of Android tablets including its own Galaxy tab – boosts screen production, it would enable iPad alternatives to drastically lower prices, the analyst reasons.

This only works if Apple doesn’t respond to the threat – an unlikely scenario. The Cupertino, Calif. company virtually oozes with cash and has shown little inclination to not spend billions of dollars to secure needed components.

If iPad rivals can’t directly compete on features, nor price, nor ecosystem – what’s left but to thrown in the towel?

How long do you think it’ll be before there’s a viable threat to iPad in both features and price? Let us know in the comments.

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.