Android price cuts for 2011 models an unavoidable inevitability

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 03 January 2012 18:40

Opinion and Analysis

Sony in the US has dropped its Android 3.x Honeycomb-powered Tablet S prices by US $100, but haven't committed to doing so in Australia - despite next week's CES and a plethora of new Android 4.0 tablets to come.

In a world where instant gratification isn't fast enough, and where prices for virtually anything worldwide can be easily compared online, it's ever more awkward for manufacturers when they drop prices dramatically in one country, but don't do it in others.

As reported by Fairfax Media's Asher Moses and separately by Smarthouse's David Richards, Sony's US $100 price cuts for its Tablet S tablet aren't being replicated in Australia.

This means Australians are paying at least $192 more than their US counterparts for a tablet that will face a lot more competition once new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwhich tablets are unveiled at the CES Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.

Mr Richards quoted an anonymous source that highlighted how the iPad 2 had sold out at a major retailer during the holiday season, while Sony Tablet S models were nowhere near as popular.

Given the fact that Apple's iPad 2 has been wildly popular with people around the world and has easily withstood and even defeated the multipronged Android 'iPad-killer' threat, Sony's decision in the US to drop prices by $100 in the hope of increasing sales seems a good one. Heck, lower prices a bit further, Sony - it worked for HP even though they clearly never expected that to happen, or they probably wouldn't have been so quick to kill the HP TouchPad off.

But as Sony is serious about tablets, as its efforts at differentiation by design have shown, Sony won't be so quick to abandon its tablets as has HP, even though HP will clearly be back with Windows 8 tablets as soon as Microsoft finishes beta testing its upcoming new operating system.

Thus it seems unusual when Sony Australia doesn't see the same logic in wanting to move stock into people's hands, so they're using the devices and hopefully getting sold on whatever added extras Sony added in to enhance the standard Honeycomb experience and might consider a Tablet S II or something next time - rather than an iPad 3, or whatever Google's upcoming killer tablet will be.

Ultimately, market forces will force a company's hand - Sony Australia can't sell the current models forever, a refresh will arrive at some stage, along with the iPad 3 in what is presumed to be a March timeframe based on the last two years of iPad launches.

So'¦ no matter which company it is selling current Honeycomb based Android tablets, or any tablet that isn't one of the upcoming iPad 3's'¦ price cuts for 2011 Android tablets are an unavoidable inevitability, something next week's CES tech news - and that upcoming iPad 3 launch - should make clearer than ever.