Tablets Prices Hit the Floor to Compete with Fire and Nook

The prices of many 7-inch PC tablets are being dramatically cut in order to compete with the low price of Amazon Kindle Fire and other 7-inchers like Barnes & Noble Nook . According to Digitimes, tablets like the 7-inch 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook will go from $499 to as low as $199.

Also, HTC's 7-inch Android 2.3-based Flyer has already been lowered to $299, Lenovo's 7-inch A1 tablet PC to $199, and ViewSonic's 7-inch Viewbook 730 to $169.

Digitimes, with its firm grasp of the Taiwanese IT industry, suggests that the price drop is also a result of increased pressure from the 2nd and 3rd tier Chinese manufacturer tablet market. These devices are often known as “white boxes”.