Rival tablets ready to bite into iPad lead

If I were preparing to make decent, reasonably usable Android tablets to debut at, say, $300 or $400, I'd be super annoyed at the folks making $100 or $200 tablets because they're just gonna taint the brand as being utter unusable crap for anything but particular hackerish use cases.

Listen to kids and non-techies talk about music players... there are "iPods" and there are "MP3s"... most often expressed in a form like "Oh it's not an iPod, it's just an MP3." Tablet makers are gonna be in a pickle if the same dichotomy arises around iPads and "tablets".

Looks familiar.

s/rival/CrunchPad

Oh, there it is. A recycled press release from the last time somebody offered to bring out a tablet at half of Apple's price.

What I find interesting is that Apple prices their products very aggressively these days. It's true that cheaper tablets are "just around the corner," but why do we assume that Apple's price will remain at its current level? WHy do we assume that Apple won't be just as relentless at reducing iPad pricing as they are at reducing iPod pricing?

Sure, there will be really cheap no-name competitors, but I think the prospects for name brands like Dell or HP are daunting.

Is anyone else tired of hearing about all the mythical rival tablets that are "just around the corner"? I mean, Call me when you have a product and I'll be interested but for now stop bugging me.

Especially from the OLPC project which has a history of promising price points that they can't meet. Again, once they have a product in hand I'll be impressed but these types of articles are tantamount to FUD (albeit a kinder, gentler FUD with unrealistic hope replacing fear)

It'll go the same as with the iPod and iPhone - the first generation or two of competitors will fall flat on their face. The UI will be awful. The software on them will be awful. The software for syncing to them will be awful.

We'll see a viable alternative to the iPad as soon as someone writes the software to run it. Once that happens, the hyper competitive device market will take it the rest of the way.

Aren't they tired of always playing catch-up ? I'm pretty sure the iPad $500 starting price surprised a lot of them so claiming now that they will release a "rival" table for $200 or so is mostly wishful thinking.