Hisense Open to More Exclusives, It Says at Launch of Walmart Tablets

Hisense, Walmart and Nvidia threw down the gauntlet in the tablet market Thursday, jointly unveiling in New York a loaded 7-inch tablet with an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor that will begin selling Friday exclusively at Walmart for $149. They're the first Hisense tablets to be sold in the U.S., and comparable models aren’t currently being sold in the China market, Peter Erdman, Hisense vice president-consumer electronics, told Consumer Electronics Daily.

The Hisense Sero 7 Pro, based on an Android 4.2 Jelly Bean processor, has a 1280 x 800 IPS (in-plane switching) display, 2-megapixel front camera, 5-megapixel rear camera with flash and auto-focus, 8 gigabytes on-board memory and 1 gigabyte RAM, Hisense said. Battery life is given as 10 hours, largely enabled by a fifth core in Nvidia’s Tegra 3 processor, said Nick Stam, Nvidia director-technical marketing. The tablets come pre-loaded with AccuWeather apps, Vudu, a Nook reader, Pandora, Facebook and Walmart and Sam’s Club shopping apps.

The step-up Sero also has Bluetooth, NFC, a Mobile High-Definition Link connector and USB and SD ports. A scaled down version, the Sero LT, carries a $99 list price, without cameras or high-def screen, Bluetooth or near field communication, with a two-core Nvidia processor and Android 4.1. Hisense is positioning the lower end model to children to a point, Erdman said. Erdman said the company didn’t want to put out a $49 “kiddie-type product” and chose instead to produce a “user-friendly model with something inside.” A second-generation lineup is expected later in the year and will likely include 10-inch and LTE models, Erdman said.

On whether Hisense is looking for similar exclusive product partnerships with Walmart and other retailers, Erdman said the company is “always open to that discussion” citing the company’s manufacturing ability. The company can support similar deals with “two or three” retailers, he said. Hisense will expand marketing this year online and in print, now that it has a dedicated marketing vice president, Jonathan Frank, in place. Marketing won’t extend to TV for now, he said. “The big TV money is a year or two down the road,” he said.

Asked what cost concessions Nvidia had to make to contribute to the barebones $149 price, John Lonergan, Nvidia’s vice president, Americas, sales and marketing, side-stepped the question and told us the company is “just pleased with the partnership overall.” The price is “going to be very attractive,” he said, citing the expandability, connectivity and power of the device. On whether the Tegra 3 would appear in similarly priced tablets this year, Lonergan referred to a “wide range” of price points for tablets bearing the Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 processors.

The partnership with Hisense, an exclusive for the Sero line, shows Walmart “is really serious about the tablet business” and will continue to expand its assortment of products at the “price points and values” that Walmart customers want, Kevin O'Connor, Walmart general merchandise manager for electronics, told us. Walmart’s lowest priced tablet in stores before the Sero 7 LT was a Nextbook Android 4.0 on “special buy” for $69. Online, Walmart sells a 7-inch iView tablet for $59.

Walmart plans to market Hisense TVs and tablets as a family, but O'Connor doesn’t envision special bundles because of Walmart’s “everyday low price” strategy. “We just want to have great values and offers on products we carry,” he said. On whether the Sero tablets could come in even lower as a specially priced doorbuster item on Black Friday, O'Connor said, “We'll see.”

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Hisense’s big-box distribution strategy for Ultra HD “is coming together,” Erdman said. Hisense will focus on mass retailers in phase one and doesn’t plan to go through specialty dealers at launch, Erdman said. Chinese TV competitor Seiki threw down planned pricing of $1,499 for a 50-inch 4K TV (CED April 18 p1) by Q4, and Erdman said Hisense “can produce in that price range,” but plans to do so with more features. Hisense will consistently come in “at least 20 percent less” than top-tier TV makers, Erdman said. He wouldn’t estimate a price for a Hisense Ultra HD set because “things are shaping and shifting as we speak.” Erdman said there’s a chance that Hisense will work with Sero partner Nvidia for the processor inside its 4K TV, saying Hisense will do its own upconversion.