It has been quite a while since we last heard of the $199 quad-core Android tablet. A rumour till now, it might be very well a reality soon with NVIDIA latest reference platform - dubbed as Kai.
Company had earlier mentioned that we might see a $199 tablet this summer. But it seems NVIDIA has been giving some serious thought to this idea and shared the proper roadmap in its investors' meet.
Rob Csonger, Vice President of NVIDIA mentioned that the company is working on a tablet platform Kai, which will help them in democratising its quad-core Tegra 3 system-on-chip. Furthermore, Kai is not a product but a platform for Android devices that will facilitate quad-core tablets running on Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to at the price point of $199.
Currently, Kindle Fire seems to be the benchmark for $199 tablet. This budget tablet by Amazon is quite popular and its success is largely attributed to its aggressive pricing.
At this stage, it does sound like a concept product but one should not be surprised if we see hardware manufacturers coming out with cheap quad-core tablets later in the year.