T-Mobile: Springboard Tablet Under $200T-Mobile: Springboard Tablet Under $200

SAN DIEGO -- CTIA Enterprise & Applications 2011 -- The tablet battle is well and truly on.

T-Mobile US Inc. confirmed Tuesday night at the Mobile Focus event in San Diego that its new Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Springboard tablet will be under $200 and available in time for the holiday season. (See Huawei's Springboard Into the US?.)

This will put the Springboard directly into competition with the $199 Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) Fire tablet. Amazon has already shaken up the tablet market with its keenly priced entry into the Android tablet market, which will arrive Nov. 15. (See Amazon's $199 Tablet Is No Loss Leader.)

Now T-Mobile and Huawei will create more waves with the cheap but well-featured Springboard. The tablet will be the first 7-inch webpad to support version 3.2 of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s operating system, while offering HSPA+ 3G connectivity -- marketed as "4G" by T-Mobile -- and sporting a HD screen with a 1.2GHz processor. (See T-Mobile Advances Portfolio of 4G Tablets.)

This means that for the $499 you'd spend on a 16GB iPad 2 with Wi-Fi, you could buy two Springboards and still have change for a nice meal for two. This could be particularly relevant for Android tablet vendors as Amazon and Huawei drive down the pricing of products in this market segment.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile