By Star Chang, posted Jan 12, 2012 at 7:40 PM, 1,924 views,

Low Cost Ice Cream Sandwich Tablets Might Be The Show Stopper (Video)

Chinese chip maker Rockchip wants to make a splash in the U.S. and Europe market this year and drive down the prices of Android 4.0 tablets to under US$100. Rockchip is the well-known China manufacturer making ARM processors used in inexpensive Chinese tablets. The company is showing several prototype tablets which run Ice cream Sandwich and Adobe Flash 11 at CES and they are getting attention by the industry …

Rockchip’s ARM-based chips power some inexpensive tablets from China that sell on eBay. Chinese tablets, some of which are iPad knock-offs, serve basic web surfing needs, but lack of enhance software support. Rockchip supplies parts for Apple and Samsung too, but with tablet shipments rising, the chip maker hopes to raise its profile and sell its new ARM-based chip worldwide. A 7-inch tablet with the new Rockchip chip may be priced at US$95 to US$125, while the 10-inch tablet could be less then US$200. These tablets will be using the company latest 1.2 GHz RK2918 processor chip.

The tablets on display at CES are reasonably responsive, but not as fast as some of the high-end tablets seen at the show with chips from Qualcomm or NVIDIA. For instance, the normal operation is pretty smooth without any noticeable lag. Viewing photos from the photo gallery app is fast, pinch-to-zoom was buttery smooth. Web browsing a little bit laggy, properly due to the amount of RAM for each distinct devices. Not much problem for playing casual games and watching HD movies. Rockchip is demonstrating the fact that they can run Google’s latest operating system.

Rockchip has made some low cost ARM processors which offer decent, but not spectacular performance. These budget Android 4.0 tablets will attract many average consumer when they start to roll out the market.

Source: Rockchip, PCworld, Liliputing