It’s turning out to be a season of price cuts and heavy discounts. It had all started out with the now famous discount of the HP TouchPad, but the latest to be infected with the price cut bug is the Flyer from HTC. No one is complaining, however, especially since the Flyer has now come to be available for an affordable $299, down from the high flying $499 that it had started out with.
So why the sudden drop in price? Well, that can definitely be attributed to the Amazon Fire which has been made available at an extremely competitive price tag of just $199. In fact, the price is so affordable that for other 7 inch tablet PCs out there, it has turned out to be a battle of survival and reducing price is one sure fire method of ensuring a longer stay in the market. US retailer Best Buy has done just that, though no doubt the Flyer could have graced more homes had this been the price right from the start. The price comes into effect from this Sunday, the 1st of October and all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile standalone stores will be selling the Flyer tablet at the new reduced price from tomorrow onwards.
Will the Flyer make for a good buy even at the reduced price? Well that’s a big yes as the tablet is definitely well put together and makes a strong case for itself. Its specs reveal the story, with 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon single core processor, 16 GB of internal memory, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread as the operating system. HTC’s own Sense UI makes for a layer on top of Android Gingerbread that allows one to take notes or draw pictures with the stylus. A 7 inch capacitive touch panel with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels makes up the front of the Flyer.
What remains to be seen is if the price drop leads to the HTC Flyer being scooped up in hordes or consumers stick to the even cheaper Amazon Fire. The Flyer is a proper tablet with all the bells and whistles that have come to be associated with a standard tablet, while the Amazon Fire is a built-to-a-price sort of thing and lacks several tablet features such as cameras at the front and rear and internal memory stands at just 8 GB.
[showhide type=’pressrelease’]Best Buy® Offers $299 HTC Flyer Tablet Starting Oct. 1
MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30, 2011 – Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), a leading retailer of consumer technology products, today announced it is reducing the price of the HTC Flyer from $499.99 to $299.99 starting Saturday, Oct. 1. Customers can take advantage of this permanent lower price online at BestBuy.com and at all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile standalone stores nationwide.
The HTC Flyer is a fast, portable, light-weight tablet that integrates the immersive and highly intuitive HTC Sense(TM) experience and enables content including videos, music, games and more to be easily accessed and enjoyed. The 7-inch (measured diagonally) tablet operates on the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system and comes loaded with 16GB of memory.
Best Buy is advancing growth of the tablet category by combining the most tablets under one roof1 with a shopping experience that allows customers to easily try and compare devices. The retailer is committed to delivering superior value and convenience by presenting a full line of accessories with each device, along with exclusive advantages such as tablet selection and connections support from specially trained Best Buy Blue Shirts, financing options, Reward Zone points, and tablet trade-in and Buy Back programs. For more information about these programs and tablets at Best Buy, visit www.bestbuy.com or www.bestbuy.com/tablets.
HTC Flyer WiFi now selling for $299 at Best Buy. [/showhide]
via androidos
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
