Despite the fact that first-tier vendors including Samsung Electronics, Asustek Computer, Lenovo and Toshiba have significantly reduced the number of new tablet products for the second half to cut costs, white-box players in China continue to push into the tablet market with full strength, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Asustek is able to ship about 10 million tablets a year, but the business segment is still seeing losses. To reduce costs, the vendor has recently reshaped its marketing strategy, unifying its tablet series including the Transformer Pad, Fonepad, MeMO Pad and Vivo Tab into one series, the ZenPad.

Asustek will reduce the number of its new tablet projects by 50% and also narrow down areas of sales for these devices to focus on those that contribute profits.

Samsung's tablets are facing strong competition from China's inexpensive models and the Korea-based vendor has also been reducing its product R&D and focusing on inexpensive models.

Lenovo is turning its focus to entry-level Wi-Fi-only models and tablets with phone functions for the second half.

HP, Dell and Toshiba are seeing their tablet sales weakening and have only placed limited orders for new models.

White-box tablet vendors have been expanding into markets outside of China; however, most of them are unable to achieve profits from their sales without Intel's assistance.

With the consumer tablet market unlikely to see any further growth, most players have turned to the enterprise market.