The tablet space has really heated up these past few years and while the iPad is still a dominating force, manufacturers have been busy creating and shipping a slew of different tablets running Android. One tablet that’s done incredibly well is the Kindle Fire which is Amazon’s 7 inch tablet and competitor. The success of the 7 inch tablet has had many trying to capitalize on that success and NVIDIA, known for its GPUs and more recently their Tegra chips for mobile devices, has unveiled a new platform called Kai which will help to create a quad core tablet for just $199.
It’s pretty amazing to see how things are evolving. Not too long ago, this would have been completely unthinkable, but with the advancements in hardware and prices getting lower for certain hardware, a $199 quad core tablet is very real. Now, Kai isn’t some hardware. It’s a plan to make their quad core Tegra 3 chip more accessible to everyone. There is some speculation however as to is Kai just a reference design or in fact a consumer product. Some would suggest a bit of both.
Back in January during CES, Asus announced the MeMO 370T which was a 7 inch quad core tablet at the nice price point of $249. Since then, an insider back in March claimed that the tablet has been scrapped in favor of the so called Nexus tablet that’s been buzzed about. If NVIDIA can work with manufacturers to introduce something very real rather soon, they could easily take the 7 inch tablet market and offset the success of the Kindle Fire.