Speaking of the low prices, here's a nice piece about how the often talked about price premium that tablets command over "normal" notebooks is slowly coming down. No real numbers, but those change often, and the phenomenon is really true: tablets are beginning to cost close to what a similar notebook would or does. So everything is fine and cheap Tablet PCs abound, right? (That sounds suspiciously close to Microsoft marketing). Well, not really. There are two factors to take into consideration:
Tablets may now cost close to what a similar notebook would fetch, but those "similar" notebooks are usually pretty high or at least medium-level ones. These days, you can get a new cheapo laptop for, say $600-700. So where is the corresponding similar tablet, that costs about $800? There are none. And the much hoped for Averatec now seems a little pricier than expected.
So while we could say that tablet features are costing buyers less, it doesn't mean that you can buy a cheap Tablet PC. That low-end category isn't quite there yet, and probably won't be until somebody like Dell commoditizes the space.
There is also another angle. Right now, there are a number of OEMs pushing many models across several generations into sales channels. So we have tablets that cost, say $1,300 - because they are a first-gen unit, and ones that cost $2,500 or more, because they a fully loaded current unit. That provides a decent variety of price ranges. Well, at least some variety, anyway. There's a catch though: many buyers don't know about half (most?) these models. Your typical consumer these days probably equates "Tablet PC" to "Toshiba M205", because that's what's on many store shelves. As a result, they also equate "Tablet PC" to "$2,400 or so", which isn't really true, but they aren't being given a chance to correct that misconception.
As a result, even though there are "affordable" tablets, the perception is that they Tablet PCs as a whole are expensive. Even dealers don't always have access to the full lineup to offer to their customers. In the end, the OEM/VAR complexities, lack of marketing, and poor retail availability lead to yet another misconception about tablets. And it's probably another one that is costing it sales.
For a very sobering and realistic perspective on this "decreasing price delta", take a look at this story from a Tablet PC MVP shopping around for mobile computers for two of his kids. And next time, when you hear the often repeated mantra about how tablets cost the same as ordinary notebooks these days, just remember that it's a little relative, depending on where you are on the price curve, and how educated you are about the Tablet PC market.