Best Buy jumps into the tablet market with the Insignia Flex
For the last month Insignia has been teasing a new product on its Twitter feed. Then, it finally announced exactly what was coming on its Facebook page: a new a 9.7-inch tablet.
If you are unfamiliar with Insignia, it is Best Buy’s in-house brand, but this doesn’t mean that Best Buy is completely in charge of every aspect of every products labeled with the Insignia brand. Typically, the products are made by a different company, then sold to Best Buy with the Insignia name on them, as opposed to the name of the actual manufacturer. Normally, Insignia branded products are on the less expensive end of the spectrum, too.
This is not an unusual practice. My father works for the sister company of Wonder Bread. Wonder Bread provides loaves of bread for a lot of different grocery stores who then simply repackage the bread in their own bags. So when you buy a loaf of Walmart-branded bread you are very likely eating the same loaf of bread that you could find in the Wonder Bread bags. This allows the grocery stores to make a little money off their own line of bread, without having to own all of the manufacturing plants that it would normally require. The same principle applies to Best Buy and its Insignia brand.
The new tablet has been dubbed the Insignia Flex. There isn’t a whole lot known about it as of yet, but there are a couple of pictures on Insignia’s Facebook page, and just a few details. The tablet will come with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a dual-core 1Ghz processor, and a ten hour battery life. And that’s all we know at this point.
The release date has been set for November 15. Based on the specs, my guess is that it will be priced in the $150-250 range.
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