While Samsung's new PRO range of tablets is what has us excited, Samsung's upcoming – and likely to be announced at CES in a few hours – Galaxy Tab 3 Lite is perhaps the most important tablet in Samsung's ambitions to rule the tablet market in 2014, as it is expected to be the cheapest Samsung tablet ever, a fact that will help the company rake up sales in emerging markets and compete with local manufacturers.
We had been the first to confirm that the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite would be priced at around 100 Euros, and now a report from DigiTimes confirms that that will indeed be the case – the Tab 3 Lite will be priced at just $129 in the U.S.. That's around the same price as Samsung's low-end phones like the Galaxy Y, though with respectable specs for the price, including a 1024×600 7-inch screen, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and at least Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
Of course, some folks will say that Google's or Amazon's tablets offer much better value for their price tags, but people have to understand that at $129, the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite will be a good option for those who can't overstep their budgets, and also that Samsung cannot afford to sell high-end tablets at cost like Google because unlike the latter, Samsung doesn't have a huge app store and content ecosystem to recoup profits lost on offering devices at cost.
The Galaxy Tab 3 Lite is expected to launch in the second week of January, so an official announcement will likely be made at Samsung's CES press conference in the next few hours, along with the entire range of PRO tablets. We'll be updating this post with details on the full hardware and availability details once they're announced, so make sure to check back later on.
