Acer, Lenovo Quad-Core Tablets Coming in Q1

These devices are expected to be in the range of $460 and $600, according to Digitimes, and are intended to be direct competition for Asus's EeePad Transformer Prime. However, it won't be plain sailing for the these tablet manufacturers. Digitimes sources are concerned as to how successful the tablets can be in a market where Apple and Amazon are believed to account for the lion's share. These sources said that non-Apple tablets may only account for 10 to 15 percent of the entire tablet market.

Additionally, though the excitement surrounding quad-core tablets is palpable, it is unclear just how much value a quad-core processor has in the tablet market, where hardware horsepower isn't as important as it is in a PC. Tablets have established a perception of 'good-enough' computing and consumers tend to care little about the RAM or the actual processor in such a device if it does not offer any useful application or advantages. Manufacturers such as Samsung, Asus, Acer and Lenovo will need to overcome this by establishing an experience perception and developing a marketing strategy that describes how the quad-core processor enables experience.

Hardware alone may not help Android tablet makers much. It is probably much more important to bring the price of Tegra 3 tablets down to the $300 mark as Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang recently predicted.