According to a survey conducted at the Global Sources Mobile Electronics trade fair by Digitimes the cheap and cheerful market is converting their production lines to entry level notebooks – the very technology which the Tame Apple Press claimed had been wiped out because of Steve Job’s invention.”

The move by the tablet makers is expected to heat up competition in the entry-level notebook segment. The reason they are not interested in higher value notebooks is that they can’t be bothered with the technology and patent barriers.

Chinese-based tablet makers are rolling out notebooks by connecting tablets with external keyboards. The idea is to keep the sizes of notebooks below 12 inches and internal memory at 16GB and 32GB. The chip of choice is Intel Bay Trail and prices range from $120-$150.

The white-box makers are likely to roll out Cherry Trail-based products at year-end 2015 or in early 2016.

Despite being a fad when Apple marketed its version, Tablets never found a killer app and were easily replaced by making smartphones bigger. Newer high-end tablets now have keyboards and are used in the same way as notebooks.