Price Drops: Acer Iconia Tab A500 &Toshiba Thrive

We’re flooded with tablets on the market now, especially in the US where you’ve got your pick of pretty much any tablet that’s been released – and something’s got to give soon. Price drops. Motorola is the first, dropping the price of its 32GB Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi down to $499 – $100 off in both the US and Taiwanese markets, putting it inline with the cheapest Android tablets (for the storage you get) out there. Acer and Toshiba could be next in line with price drops on their tablets.

We’ve heard the Acer price drop rumor before and it’s turned up again. Acer are expected to drop prices in August – if they want to meet their shipping goals for this year. It’s already happened in Japan; the Acer Iconia Tab A500 sells $100 cheaper (relative to the local market) but I think there’s leeway for that given the weak dollar.

Toshiba is also expected to drop prices on the Thrive tablet in Taiwan, in August, despite only just launching. Their highest end 32GB model goes for $579.

Can prices go below $399 for Tegra 2 10-inch 16GB Android tablets at this stage? Digitimes mentioned last month (can’t find the article anymore) that ASUS makes most their profits not from the Eee Pad Transformer tablet itself but from the $150 keyboard dock it sells. [Source: netbooknews.com]