Rant: Android tablet pricing will kill the genre

By James Kendrick

Last month I shared what I believe to be true about the price consumers will be willing to spend on tablets, and with information slowly leaking out that OEMs are determined to price themselves out of contention I can’t keep quiet. My original rant was based on information at the time that the Motorola XOOM was going to be priced at an entry point of $799. I explained why I think that is too high, even for a well-equipped device. Now we are hearing that the XOOM will be retailing in Best Buy for $1199, an insane figure.
LG is showing off its upcoming Optimus Pad at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and it looks really nice with an unusual 8.9-inch screen. The insanity with Android tablet pricing continues, however, as word comes that the LG tablet will sell for €999 ($1350) in Europe. This is so far out in left field that it’s clear the Android tablet genre may be doomed for failure on a massive scale.
Is the problem that vendors are cramming too many high-cost components (or features) in tablets to try to stand out? If so that is a strategy doomed to failure, as it prices the device out of the range consumers will be willing to pay. Apple set the standard with pricing on the iPad, and no matter how any competing device compares with the iPad it better be priced similarly. That means $499 for an entry level model (Wi-Fi only), and well under $1,000 for a fully equipped version.
Tablets are a different class of product that affect how consumers approach the purchasing process. They do not replace an existing class of product, so no price comparison works. It becomes more of a marketing process to stimulate an impulse purchase, and $500 is the magic price point to make that happen. Android tablet makers may be killing the genre before it even gets started. As analyst Michael Gartenberg is fond of stating, a company can sell 50,000 of anything, a point of view I share. But that sales volume is nothing in the consumer electronic space.

HANDS ON: LG Optimus 3D

by Stan Schroeder

LG is stealing a lot of thunder at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year by making everything 3D. We’ve had a chance to try out the LG Optimus 3D, the world’s first glasses-free 3D Android smartphone, and although the device is not without quirks, we’re impressed.
The Optimus 3D looks like a regular Android 2.2 smartphone, with a huge 4.3-inch screen with the standard four Android menu buttons at the bottom. What makes it different is its glasses-free 3D technology and the dual cameras on the back which let you take 3D photos and videos yourself.
For the 3D effect (which can be turned on and off at will) to work you need to position the phone just right; once you do it, though, the effect is quite convincing, especially in gaming. LG has included several 3D-enabled games with the device, including a first person shooter called Nova and a game of golf, both of which are quite fun to play on the 3D screen.
A lot of other features on the phone also revolve around 3D, such as videos, photos, and there’s even a 3D-enabled version of the UI for the device. In other words, 3D isn’t included just to make LG look good, it’s actually weaved into several different aspects of the phone.
While we don’t think the 3D features are a necessity for most users, they’re definitely fun to use and we wouldn’t mind having them, if only for the “wow” factor when you show the phone to someone.
Unfortunately, the phone is somewhat prone to crashing, especially when you delve deeper into its 3D features (the fact that most of the devices were running out of battery juice didn’t help). With a bit of polishing, though, LG might have a winner on its hands, at least until the other smartphone makers catch up with the 3D features.
Update: here’s a list of LG Optimus 3D’s specifications: 4.3-inch TFT screen with a 800×480 pixel resolution, a 1 GHz dual core CPU, 1080p playback for 2D content and 720p playback for 3D content. The device weighs 168 grams and is 128.8 x 68 x 11.9 mm in size. It should become available this March starting with the United Kingdom.