Minneapolis – Tablet pricing is
getting aggressive in time for the fourth-quarter selling season, with Best Buy
announcing a $200 price cut on the HTC Flyer to $299 starting Saturday, Oct. 1.
The new price will be available
online at BestBuy.com and at all Best Buy and stand-alone Best Buy Mobile
stores.
The Wi-Fi-only Flyer has been
available exclusively through Best Buy since May 22, though a Flyer-based 4G
HSPA+ Flyer is available from T-Mobile, and a Flyer-based Evo View 4G is sold
by Sprint.
The Flyer’s price cut, which the
chain called “permanent,” follows the chain’s reduction this week of the BlackBerry
PlayBook tablet by $200 as part of Research In Motion’s previously announced
plans to drive PlayBook sell-through in the fall through stepped-up promotion.
Best Buy’s Flyer announcement
follows the introduction this week of Amazon’s first tablet, the Kindle Fire,
at $199. It’s due Nov. 15 with a 7-inch color touchscreen, Amazon’s own
Android-based OS and 8GB of embedded memory. It accesses Amazon’s own app
store, not Google’s Android Market store, which offers many more apps.
The HTC Flyer features 7-inch
touchscreen, Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system and 16GB of memory.
PlayBook pricing at Best Buy
dropped to $299 for the 16GB version, to $399 for the 32GB version, and $499
for the 64GB version.
