Toshiba Thrive 7-inch coming in early December for less than $400 (hands-on)
Release a 10.1-inch Android Honeycomb tablet. Shrink it. Shave a few dollars off the price and release it. That seems to be the checklist on the desk of every major Android tablet manufacturer …
Context & Ripple Effects
Toshiba entered the Android tablet race loudly: back in August 2010 it was already signaling a tablet launch, and by January 2011 its teaser site was openly taunting Apple ahead of the 10.1-inch Thrive. The new 7-inch model is that same playbook compressed — shrink the existing Honeycomb slate, cut the price, ship it for the holidays.
The competitive floor is already set: Acer put the first 7-inch Honeycomb tablet on sale in August 2011 with the $330 Iconia Tab A100. Toshiba's sub-$400 December launch lands above that mark but inside the same size-and-price bracket, just as Android's smartphone momentum (40% U.S. share per comScore) gives the platform consumer pull that tablet makers are trying to convert.
First-order effects
- Toshiba's 10.1-inch Thrive now has a smaller sibling on shelves for the December buying season, giving retailers a two-size Toshiba lineup pitched under $400.
- Acer's $330 A100 becomes the direct price-and-size comparison every review of the Thrive 7-inch will be measured against.
Second-order effects
- With Acer anchoring 7-inch Honeycomb at $330, Toshiba's sub-$400 entry invites further price cuts across the small-tablet tier heading into 2012, squeezing margins on hardware that is otherwise near-identical spec-for-spec.
- Apple faces no equivalent product in this bracket, so the 7-inch Android segment competes mostly with itself — meaning differentiation shifts to ports, removable features, and software skins rather than platform.
Third-order effects
- If every major Android manufacturer keeps running the same shrink-and-discount checklist, the tablet market stratifies into fixed size/price tiers where brand matters less than component costs — a commoditization path that mirrors what happened to Android handsets.
- Sustained sub-$400 pricing pressure pushes Honeycomb's economics toward volume over margin, which favors manufacturers with their own display and silicon supply chains and squeezes those buying both externally.
The trend: Android tablets are racing down-market in both screen size and price, with each major manufacturer cloning the shrink-the-flagship playbook to chase holiday volume against an uncontested iPad.