Nvidia CEO predicts $199 Tegra 3 tablets by summer

Once upon a time, the idea of buying a quality tablet for $199 seemed far-fetched. Now it’s sounding like the sweet spot. Following up rumors of a $199 “Google Nexus” tablet, and the strong success of Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang sees tablets powered by his high-end Tegra 3 chip coming to market this summer for a mere $199. That’s after eliminating $150 worth of build materials “like expensive memory,” says Huang, so this isn’t a no-compromise proposition. Still, it’s clear the price is what’s most important right now: “At $199, you can just about buy a tablet at a 7-Eleven,” he told the New York Times. Funnily enough, it was as recently as November that Jen-Hsun was making headlines with a prediction of $299 Tegra 3 tablets in the mid-2012, so things are obviously progressing faster than he expected.