Chinese chip outfit Allwiner is currently the second biggest supplier of tablet SoC parts in terms of sheer volume, although most of its chips can't hold a candle to powerful Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm parts used in high-end tablets.

Allwinner makes its money on the Chinese white-box market. As a result most of its chips have to be very cheap. One example is the Allwinner A33, which recently entered production according to Liliputing. 

The chip sells for just $4 and it is used in cheap white-box tablets with Android 4.4 on top. Some of the tablets cost as little as $60. The chip has four Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.3GHz backed by ARM Mali-400 MP2 graphics. It supports screen resolutions up to 1280x800, which is still enough in this market segment.

The A33 is a far cry from first-tier flagship parts like the Snapdragon 801, Tegra K1 or Apple's A7. However, at $4 it is in a league of its own, as it costs just a fraction of what a vendor would have to pay for a high-end SoC.