Acer announces 16 GB Iconia tablet to improve sales

Acer has unveiled a new 16GB version of its Iconia tablet which has come with a nice price-cut of £100 over its original 32GB version. This is presumably to try and tempt people away from the iPad and other competing products. The 32GB version retailed at £450 which compared to the 32GB version of the Motorola Xoom which sells for £480 and the 32GB iPad 2 retails at a similar price. That said, until now Acer had no answer to the 16GB iPad being retailed at £399.

The £100 price reduction to £350 for 16GB less memory certainly seems like quite a good deal considering it costs Acer no where near an extra £100 to produce the 32GB version. Apple, for instance, have only separated their two models out by £80 so a £350 price tag might start to seem tempting. However, is £350 compared to £399 going to really temp people away from the iPad especially when the iOS is certainly a more polished OS and has certainly had a lot more time to mature in terms of reliability and of course more importantly the App Store.

While Acer seemed to be trying to undercut their competitors they did mention that their sales figures for the A500 and W500 were higher than they had expected. Although that is probably the case with all tablet manufacturers as no one really thought the tablet would take off! The Windows/AMD based W500 has been extremely popular in the business sectors as it allows smoother transitions and syncs between desktop and tablet computers.

Hopefully this kind of price-cut will help improve the competition and it might even in the future force other manufacturers to contemplate lowering their prices. That said, we doubt Apple will buckle!