Cheap Tablets Threaten Android Position

By Lucy Mitchell
Nov 24 2010

Industry leaders in the US reported this morning that the cheap tablets that are hitting the US market could have a negative effect on the Android operating system popularity.

Android is an open source, free operating system that is used on many devices in the tech world. However, foreign companies have started making low-grade tablet devices, hailed as iPad clones, and offering them through the US market. They have decided to include the Android operating system.

Tech experts have said that this is the real problem when you have a free open source operating system on the market. It is not long before poor quality devices that are built cheap and then sold for well below standard retail hit the market.

Once the user finds out that the devices will do little that the better versions offer, they tend to place their fault with the operating system.

However, there is little that the tech industry is going to be able to do about this problem. Many people in the US are hungry and they want to get their hands on a tablet PC but they cannot simply afford the high prices that Apple and other companies want for their offerings.

Those people will turn to the low-grade devices and hope for the best. In the end they find that they have a tablet that is virtually worthless and not capable of performing even the simplest tasks.

This problem could drop the appeal of the Android operating system unless Google makes some changes.