CES 2012 will be a very interesting occasion, both for high end gadgets and those cheap ones that copy the higher end units. Rockchip will be in Vegas with a cheapo tablet of this kind, a $100 Ice Cream Sandwich slate. Lately, this trend of making cheap Android 4.0 tablets has been widespread among Chinese device makers, as you also saw reflected in the news we publish.
Rockchip is a Chinese chip manufacturer that was the first to show Android ICS running on tablet hardware back in November. TabTimes is reporting that the Asian company will be behind dozens of tablets at CES when it comes to their choice of chipsets. Rockchip VP Chen Feng claims that he expects to see between 30 and 40 tablets in Vegas powered by the company’s chipsets, which is an incredible achievement. A spokeswoman also mentioned that at least a 7 inch tablet will be priced between $95 and $125.
A 10 inch model will go between $150 and $200, but no OEMs were mentioned exactly, although I expect that they’ll also add a bit of extra pricing. Android Ice Cream Sandwich is expected to generate a flow of low end tablets in the following months, especially since the source code for Honeycomb was not available so Chinese companies had to use Froyo and Gingerbread, but now ICS is out in the open code-wise and generating a ton of devices.
