The Android HP Slate 7 might signal good news for Microsoft

About a year ago, I had bought a newly released Nexus 7 and wrote a review on it. The "Q88 Tablet " version of that review was: "Why would you not find the additional money and buy an iPad?"When HP announced the release of the Jelly Bean HP Slate 7, I bought one to have a look at.

But events of the past year have encouraged me to take a more nuanced view with regards to the Slate 7 and its sibling low-end Android tablets. Specifically, just like Android phones are now mature and decent enough to play well in the market against the iPhone, Android tablets are now good enough to hold their own in the tablet market against the iPad.

The iPad is still the best tablet on the market, and if you happen to have the available cash, it's still the one to buy. However, if you're definitely not going to buy an iPad (or even a Windows tablet, which we'll come to), buying a Slate 7 actually is good value for money. FineIn the US, the 8GB HP Slate 7 can be yours for $170. (In the UK, I paid £129, including VAT.)Also in the UK, the 16GB Nexus 7 can be yours for $200.cdF34ds

If you're in the market for a $200 tablet, both of these are fine. They're both basically the same device. The HP has the edge on build quality, and also has a rear-facing camera and expandable storage, whereas the Nexus doesn't. The Nexus also has a higher-resolution screen, and the Slate's screen is decidedly murky. Seeing as the whole point of a tablet is the screen, that counts for something.So, sure — it's fine. The Slate 7 is "fine". And the Nexus 7 is also fine.

With regards to cheapo Q88 Android Tablet , we need to think of a couple of things. Whilst you have been able buy dirt cheap Android tablets for very little money, the market now has the option of two devices that are very good. Three, if you include the Kindle Fire, which for this argument we might as well do.

Unless we now live in a parallel universe, where market forces don't apply, downward price pressure on decent Android tablets now seems like a certainty. As consumers, we can now look forward to average selling prices (ASPs) on low-end Android devices drifting lower.

HP appears to have deliberately priced the Slate 7 to be price competitive with the Nexus 7. That tells us how old school OEMs are thinking about this new market opportunity. Spoiler: They're looking at it in exactly the same way that they've been looking at the PC market.

Make them smaller and use an x86 chip rather than ARM, and you can likely trim the price, but can you get a 7-inch BOXCHIP Android Tablet down to a street price of $170? My ZDNet colleague Ed Bott recently wrote up the Acer Iconia W3-810 tablet, which leaked on Amazon. This is an 8.1-inch Atom-based tablet. Probably yours for $380.

There's no way that x86-based Windows tablets are going to end up at $150-ish anytime soon, which suggests to me a market where you end up with $150-ish Android tablets at the low end, and a premium sector that's made up of iPads and Windows tablets at round $400-ish