White-Box Tablet Manufacturers Aggressively Price Cutting To Stay Competitive
Digitimes reports that Chinese-based “white-box” tablet vendors are really stepping up their game with price cutting in order to stay competitive. With Amazon, Google, Samsung and Acer all pushing aggressively in the 7 inch form factor market Chinese white-box vendors are being forced to continually low prices to keep sales high. This aggressive price cutting is good for the overall tablet market and is apparently stimulating overall demand:
“The sources pointed out that entry-level ARM-based processor solutions from China-based chipmakers and help from China’s supply chain are enabling the white-box vendors’ competition in the tablet market through price cuts. Low-price devices are also stimulating overall demand in the tablet market.”
In Taiwan Acer and ASUS are selling dual core 7 inch tablets for as low as NT$5000 (US $169), MSI as low as as NT$4000 (US $135) and consequently white-box manufacturers are pricing at a very low NT$2000 ($98). Of course this is great news for Western consumers because if you want to get your hands on some cheap functional Android tablets then it is easily done.
“In the US, white-box players are more aggressive in pricing. At Walmart, a major channel retailer in the country, white-box vendor Xelio’s 7-inch model is priced at US$49; an 8-inch Nextbook, featuring Android 4.1, 8GB storage, 1.5GHz dual-core ARM A9 processor, is priced at US$99; and a Double Power 9-inch device, coming with a keyboard and a protective cover, sells for US$89….IDC’s figures also have showed that the non-top-5 brand vendors’ combined market share rose from 26% in the second quarter of 2012 to about 39% in the second quarter of 2013.”
Image courtesy of FocalPrice.com
My personal experience with these “white box devices” is you get exactly what you pay for, junk. That’s probably not the case with a lot of them though but I’d be very wary of them.
I have a white-box phone 😛 I disagree. I had a white-box tablet (it was actually that one above in the picture) and again that was great until someone cracked my screen :'( I think if you buy the right one from the right buyer you’ll do just fine. In most cases firms like MSI/DGM/Sumvision/StorageOptions and other low cost tablet brands like that literally just rebadge white-box tablets with an Android creation of their choice.
As I said, It’s probably not the case with all of them. I had a Point of View 10″ tablet which lasted a mind boggling fortnight and in that time it was returned to the supplier twice before I finally threw it back at them for good. Careful homework could get you a killer deal though.