Most people think that when it comes to gadgets, prices only move in one direction, and that is up! However, with a brief history lesson in the tech industry, we can infer that this actually isn’t the case, and a lot of the time you will see prices gradually decrease over time, rather than increase – like you see with the Nook line once the Nook Tablet is released.

After all, if you bought a PC in the late 80’s or the early 90’s, there is a pretty good chance that you paid for it more than you would now. And with the huge feeding frenzy that was on HP’s hands after the $99 Touchpad sale, tech companies are finally opening their eyes to the fact that lower prices may be the way to go.

Obviously we aren’t going to see Apple lower the price of the iPad anytime soon, they are a little too stubborn and to be honest, they probably don’t have to. But take the Amazon Kindle Fire for instance.

Low Budget Tablets Could Threaten the iPad

Sure, it doesn’t have all of the great capabilities of a full tablet, but it has a lot of stuff that will leave 90% of customers happy. After all, you are going to have a plethora of magazines, books, at your disposal, along with apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus for streaming, not bad at all for just $199.

Now you can even get a Samsung Galaxy Tablet for $199, which has just about everything anyone could possibly expect from a tablet, and the newest HP touchpad isn’t far behind in pricing either. Although Apple is poised to ship out a whopping 12 million iPads this quarter, it does have to make you wonder if this sort of pricing is worrying the execs at Apple.

Even though the majority of these budget tablets can’t compete with the iPad in a head-to head competition, when you consider the deep discounts that they offer, it is enough to make anyone a little bit worried.