If we're to hold up the Kindle Fire as the first genuine Android tablet success story, I think it's too easy to say that price is what put it on top. There are other $199 tablets out there. Hell, there are $99 tablets out there.Yes, there are $99 Android tablets out there. But guess what? They're junk! CNet's own rating system classes them as such. Here's the $199 Velocity Micro Cruz T408:
Maylong M-150 $99 Android Tablet from Walgreens from Off The Broiler on Vimeo.
What Amazon did with the Kindle Fire is make good, solid, reliable tablet for $199. There's a big gulf between some no-name brand generic Android tablet and the Kindle Fire. People know the Kindle brand, and they sure know the Amazon brand. The trick isn't to make a cheap product, it's to make a good value product. Amazon knew the difference between the two. The no-name makers didn't. This is why the Kindle Fire was a hit, and it's also why you might not have heard of the other two tablets. There's a lot of cheap and nasty junk out there produced with one goal in mind - suckering people into buying something that vaguely looks like an iPad, only built so cheap as to be utterly useless. Don't fall into the trap! Related: