Hewlett Packard have shown that there is a huge market for cut price tablet sales, but with a $300 loss on every unit sold it certainly won't be a business plan that other companies will want to copy. Lenovo have released their new IdeaPad A1, at only $199 ….. but can it succeed?

Apple are dominating the tablet market, offering their tablets from $499 upwards. While there are plenty of unknown brands populating the ‘bargain basement' sector there hasn't been a noticeable demand. The TouchPad is an exception, because people were aware that Hewlett Packard were merely ‘clearing stock' to minimize the overall loss. It is human nature to pick up a bargain, right?

The IdeaPad A1 is offered at $199, twice the price of the discounted TouchPad. When looking at the specs, it has a capacitive touch screen running at 1024×600 resolution. Thankfully they haven't opted for a cheaper resistive touch screen which does not perform as well.

Inside is a single core Cortex A8 processor which runs on the 2.3 Gingerbread Android operating system. There are two 3 megapixel cameras, one at the front and one at the back. 2GB of internal storage is given and a micro SD slot which will allow for a 32GB increase in capacity.

The specifications, for the price are pretty good. It will be released at the end of the month and Lenovo are offering it in black, white, blue and pink.

The big question however is whether this will sell. At $199, it isn't the $99 bargain that has helped clear TouchPad stock, but it might be cheap enough to generate decent sales. At this price we would imagine Lenovo profits won't be very high either.

Kitguru says: $199 for a tablet from a well known manufacturer. Are you interested?

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