Tegra 3 tablets could drop to $300 in 2012, says Nvidia

Tablets running on the quad-core Tegra 3 processor may drop in price sooner than later, said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in a meeting Friday.

According to Engadget, Huang expects Tegra 3 tablets to drop in price in “a couple of quarters” to $299. This means that by mid or late 2012, quad-core Android tablets could be as aggressively priced as the current $199 Kindle Fire if Huang’s predictions remain true.

As a reminder, the flagship Honeycomb tablet of 2010 launched in February for a costly $800. The Xoom carries the Tegra 2 processor, which in itself launched early 2010 as well. This is compared to the expected $499 MSRP Asus Transformer Prime launching next month with the Tegra 3 APU at its core. The current trend suggests that tablet prices with the Tegra 3 may drop more quickly than did tablets with Tegra 2. In contrast, the base iPad 2 model still retails for $499 despite being in market since March.

It was only earlier this year when manufacturers were hard at work barely cracking the $499 price point, but a $299 retail price could be just what Android tablets need in order to stay competitive with Apple. The so far successful sales of the inexpensive Kindle Fire are a good indication of this.

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