The research firm estimates that the average tablet now costs $386, and attributes the falling price of Apple’s iPad 2 as one of the reasons for the trend.

That said, the company also stresses that a lack of innovation in the tablet market has pushed some vendors into making budget pricing a feature of their devices.

“There are few innovations from vendors to differentiate their tablets; low price seems to be the major factor to attract consumers to buy tablets other than iPads”, said IMS analyst, Gerry Xu.

Although the history of low-cost tablets tends to be dominated by unknown Asian vendors, there have been signs recently that the bigger brands are now taking a closer look at this half of the market.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble have both come to market with well-received $199 tablets, while Google and even Apple are rumored to have plans to launch sub-$250 tablets in the second half of the year.