Life hasn’t been easy for tablet manufacturers competing with Apple’s iPad. Perennially unable to compete with Apple’s tablet on features and interest, rivals have attempted to veer in another direction entirely: By undercutting the iPad’s $500 price tag.
ViewSonic is the latest company to take the sub-$500 route. Its newest tablet is the ViewBook 730, a seven-inch tablet running runs Android 2.2 on a ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz processor. Featuring a HDMI-output, upgradable memory, and intergrated with Amazon’s Android App store, the tablet offers quite a few features at half the price of the dominating iPad.
But will it be enough? ViewSonic seems have cottoned onto the reality that there are many potential tablet owners who are turned off by the idea of shelling out at least $500 for a new tablet. Of course, the ViewBook’s seven-inch form factor is also likely to draw some eyes. But with the HTC Flyer and BlackBerry PlayBook vying for domination of the seven-inch space, ViewSonic is likely to face stuggles here as well.
The ViewBook will be available at the end of June.
