back to article Nvidia wants sub-£130 Tegra 3 tablets out this summer

Chip maker Nvidia this week promised it will bring the price of its Tegra 3 hardware down sufficiently to see Android tablets packing the chip hit price points as low as $199 (£125). The company's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, insisted such budget Tegra 3 slates will be available this summer, the New York Times reports. Jen-Hsun Huang …

COMMENTS

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  1. GettinSadda

    Wanna bet...

    They will be $199 and £230?

    </moan>

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typo in your opening sentence. You presumably meant "...hit price points as low as $199 (£199)."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Indeed

      You have to cater for the intelligence of people reading El-Reg these days. They can't make statements like "as low as $199 (£125).", as clearly the US price is EX-tax. UK prices need VAT @20% added ontop, and the EU import duties for goods manufactured outside the EU (14% I believe).

      So even before the support costs of 21+ European languages, $199 is actually £166.50...

  3. ph0b0s

    Still has not got the memo

    There is no Windows 8 for ARM. There is Windows On ARM (WOA) which is a separate product and launches at the same time as Windows 8. WOA will only have metro and metro apps. It won't have any access to deskop applications as those are x86 only. So if you need a PC to run desktop apps, you will still need one after WOA and Windows 8 launches. Someone please explain this to Nvidia's CEO.

    The most interesting tablet / phone for this would be one with an Intel CPU as they could run native x86 code and therefore Windows 8 desktop apps. Intel already have an x86 CPU smart phone coming to market just running Android, at the moment.

    1. Gordon 10
      FAIL

      Re: Still has not got the memo

      Pure Semantic quibbling Mr Phobos

      WOA includes Office and a browser - thats 70% of desktop use cases dealt with.

      1. dogged

        Re: Still has not got the memo

        Add a keyboard dock and WoA version of VS11 and you've covered 85%.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Still has not got the memo

        "Office and a browser "

        'Cos Office on a tablet is SO productive

        1. aThingOrTwo

          Re: Still has not got the memo

          Why is it everyone forgets that tablets accept an external keyboard of your choice.

          It can be perfectly productive.

          1. ph0b0s

            Re: Still has not got the memo

            No one said you couldn't. I have an ASUS transformer with a mouse and keyboard. It is not as productive as my PC with the full desktop apps. That's the point. Since Nvidia tablets will be limited to Metro they will not have access to the full desktop and will not be as productive. You canlt even have more that two windows on screen at the same time with metro.

      3. Tom 7

        Re: Still has not got the memo

        But that's a 'Consumer' version of office. Whatever that is.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Still has not got the memo

        Except for the small part about WOA not being able to join domains, so no group policies or security permissions. If you have a corporate BYOC policy in place that might help, but most organisations are not too happy with not having control over end points.

      5. This post has been deleted by its author

      6. Richard Plinston

        Re: WOA includes Office and a browser

        WOA may well have something that is called 'Office' but it may not be all that is available on Windows. Whether it is enough has yet to be seen.

        It is also unlikely that a WOA tablet will be 'sub-£130' as Microsoft will want their tax for both 'Windows' and for what passes as 'Office'.

        1. Anonymous Cowbard

          Re: Windows Tax

          What, Microsoft want to be paid for their efforts in developing an OS and application software?!

          The cheek of it.

  4. qwarty

    Hurry up with the Tegra 4

    Tegra 3 would be fine for 2012 if not for the less than state of the art GPU. Crazy NVidia of all the ARM vendors should be so uninspiring on graphics performance. If they can drive down to $199 this Summer with a decent touchscreen good to have some more competition in that space.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hurry up with the Tegra 4

      >Tegra 3 would be fine for 2012 if not for the less than state of the art GPU

      Yep that 12-core GeForce GPU is just too slow for tablet gaming - if only NVIDIA could get their heads round GPU design.

      1. qwarty

        Re: Hurry up with the Tegra 4

        Yes, seems to benchmark too slow to get a decent frame rate for at least some WOA Direct3D games in 10"+ devices IMO tho the 4 core part is handy. I didn't mean to imply T3 not ok for the budget type tablets suggested in the article.

  5. Mikel
    Holmes

    The right time to announce this

    Like Apple, the right time to announce amazing new product is when you have a few million of them manufactured and ready to ship so people can start placing their preorders right away. The wrong time is any time before that, as it causes customers to hold off purchasing your current products in preference to your announced wonderful new products that do not yet exist. This is called the "Osborne Effect".

    1. Richard Plinston

      Re: The right time to announce this

      > it causes customers to hold off purchasing your current product

      Except for Windows 8/Metro where punters are stocking up on Windows 7 to avoid getting Metro thrust down their throats.

      But, yes, you are correct, up to a point. Right through from the 80s Microsoft's marketing has been centered around 'Vaporware'. Whenever a competitor announced a new product that was available now, Microsoft would announce that 'our much better product will be available real soon now' as they sat down to write it.

      In the days our product replacement cycles that were 3 to 5 years this worked well. Businesses would wait for MS so they could evaluate both and choose. Of course the competitor went bankrupt with no sales while everyone waited for months or years.

      Now, with product replacement cycles (for phones and tablets) counted in months or quarters vaporware simply doesn't work. By the time WOA tablets arrive that match the features of, say, iPad2 (with the price above iPad3), the market will have moved to using a mixed iOS/OSX or Android/Ubuntu system where the phone docks to a monitor or TV and tablets are passe.

  6. annodomini2

    Who's betting...

    $199 is the wholesale price.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Outlook? Really?

    Yes, there are good reasons why Outlook is popular with the office crowd.

    But that's not why tablets are sold or not sold. If the ipad can (and does) sell in great numbers without the benefit of Outlook, so it may not be the key.

    Android hasn't sold well, because the Tegra 2 was not powerful+efficient enough to push it at comparable speeds as its iOS counterpart.

    Tegra 3 is very good from a number crunching (CPU) standpoint, but it too is woefully slower than the ipad2s in the grunt GPU power department. So Apple is beating NVidia in the mad GPU race. nVidia should be ashamed.

    Android on tablets may not be as successful (as it is on phones), but then it is new in this game. nVidia on the other hand is not new in chip making business, so it had better look at its mistakes before pointing fingers.

    1. dogged

      Re: Outlook? Really?

      but it too is woefully slower than the ipad2s in the grunt GPU power department.

      Only according to slides show by, er, Apple. Anand la Shimpi disagrees and I tend to have more faith in his in-depth testing than in Tim Cook's powerpoint slides.

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