NVIDIA has grown up a lot from the days when it focused primarily on gaming chipsets that rendered graphics quickly. The company announced on Thursday that it would like to release Tegra 3 based tablet devices for $199 with a release date focused on this summer.
According to the company’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang Nvidia is attempting to lower the price of its products while raising performance of some products over the next several months.
The NVIDIA Tegra 3 which was released in November 2011 is expected to lead the company’s charge by making it cheap enough that Android based tablets can be sold for as little as $199 by Summer 2012.
According to Huang:
“We took out $150 in build materials, things like expensive memory … At $199, you can just about buy a tablet at a 7-Eleven.”
An ultra-fast $199 Android tablet could be just what manufacturer need to eat away at Apple’s market share. Apple currently sells WiFi only new iPad devices for the rather expensive price of $499. In fact the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire quickly became the second best selling tablet thanks in large part to its pricing while Windows 8 based tablets could help tilt the Tablet market away from Apple.
While Huang wouldn’t mind seeing Android tablets use his technology he notes:
“Android hasn’t developed as I’d hoped. For many people, though, work is still the primary reason to have a computer. They want Windows to work well, they want Outlook to work well. A tablet running Windows 8 with Tegra could be very nice.”
A NVIDIA Tegra chipset inside tablets could also mean trouble for Apple thanks to the chips ability to render 3-D graphics while running faster than other comparable chips on the market. Apple has used its high end graphical display as a push against competitors, a push that could end with NVIDIA providing graphics for tablet devices.
