A while ago Nvidia Ceo Jen-Hsun Huang said that we might see a $199 quad core Tegra 3 tablet on the market this summer and now Nvidia is taking one more step towards that direction, by revealing Kai. This is a platform for building quad core Android machines with very affordable prices.
ASUS is rumored to be working on such a product for Google, as the supposed Nexus Tablet, but that hasn’t been confirmed. Back to Nvidia’s announcement, during the company’s annual meeting of investors last week, VP Rob Csonger announced this idea, saying that Kai isn’t a true piece of hardware, but rather a plan to make the quad core Tegra 3 devices affordable. The purpose is offering Kindle Fire alternatives with more power and similar prices points. I guess that Nvidia got a major push from Google to create this and also they fear the increasing popularity of the Snapdragon S4, that’s actually so popular that it has a hard time keeping up with orders.
Aside from Tegra 3 with its decent battery consumption, Kai also involves the pairing of a decent display and lower cost components to fit in the price range of $199. Kai may be considered a reference design if you want and I bet that Shenzhen makers are looking into it right now, since they’re traditionally the ones creating even sub $100 Android 4.0 tablets. The device shown in the picture above reminds me greatly of the ASUS ME370T, that was a $250 quad core 7 inch slate from ASUS, that disappeared from the news, with speculations saying it may become the Nexus Tablet.
