Apple Will Fight For the Low-End | Hacker News Reader

Apple Will Fight For the Low-End

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20 pointsslaven14 comments

He's misconstruing what happened with Mini and Nano iPods. At introduction the iPod Mini only cost $50 less than the full-size $400 iPod, with less storage, and it was perceived as a pricing misstep until they sold a jillion of them. People couldn't get their heads around the idea that Apple wasn't selling a cheaper device, they were selling a smaller device. Some people still can't.

This lesson is not applicable to Apple's current crop of devices, because introducing a new screen size would throw a huge monkeywrench into app development. Anybody blithely asserting that Apple might do it to save a few cents on production has a credibility problem.

So, this post boils down to an assertion that Apple could allow manufacturing prices to dictate the size of a device, even though changing the size would have dire effects on its usability and market acceptance. Does that sound like Apple to you?

The iPad Nano already exists: the iPhone for 3G, and the iPod Touch for wifi only.

For half the price of an iPad you get a pocket sized tablet.

Heck, it's how I got sucked in. 1st gen iPod Touch promptly replaced 80% of my home PC use for 2 years, convincing me to get the iPad 1 3G just 30 minutes after it came out.

The author is in a sense right, he just doesn't realize Apple is years ahead of him.

I agree, the only sensible different screen size is a retina screen with twice the resolution. They might keep the old iPad model, selling it for less than $500. I think Apple will try to keep the $500 price for the main model as long as possible. They don't want to race to the bottom.

I think you misunderstood - I didn't say the device would have different resolution, just a smaller screen size if it saved costs. I also qualified it with "an inch smaller at most" so that UI would continue to work at 1024x768. A small change in screen size will not affect the usability of touch interface.

I agree with you, changing resolution would be a huge mistake (unless it's doubled).

A small change in screen size will not affect the usability of touch interface.

The hell it won't.

Right now the screen on an iPad is 5.86" by 7.79", for 9.75" diagonal. Multiply those dimensions by 90%, and you get a diagonal length of 8.78", an inch smaller. Except you've just cut the total area of 45.6 square inches down to 37, a difference of 19%.

In other words, you've just reduced the area of every tap target by one-fifth. Put another way, you've created a fuzz factor of one-fifth in the size at which designers will have to expect their work to be rendered. It doesn't sound to me like an acceptable strategy from the Apple, Inc of this dimension.

I'm not saying your conclusions are wrong — I think Apple's going to have a robust presence at the low end of the market. I just think they're going to get there by defining the low end as last year's iPad, not by kneecapping their own margins, or introducing compromised products.

I agree with your math, but speaking as a developer taking off half-an-inch diagonally just won't make that much difference usability wise. Touch targets are pretty generous in iOS - the device would work just fine, especially for the casual use a lower-end device would normally see.

I've seen plenty of iPad touch targets that are a little hard to hit on the current screen size.

As far as tablets go, isn't the iPad already on the low end? No reason to undercut the lowest priced mainstream tablet when they are the lowest priced mainstream tablet.

My guess is a ~$300 tablet with a smaller screen would attract a lot of people wanting to read ebooks and dip their toes into the tablet world. The only decent tablet I know of priced this way is the Nook (which, ironically, isn't being sold as a tblet: it requires rooting to act as one).

I get the feeling if Motorola could have got their price down, the iPad 2 would be cheaper. Motorola just doesn't have the ability anymore to be price competitive with Apple. I would guess HP could and Samsung should (although they haven't shown it).

I'd argue that the way Apple got into the iPad market was extremely different from the iPod. Apple's iPod play was very low key and niche at the time. The iPad, in contrast, is a mass market product Apple waited for the timing to be just perfect on. It required the technology to get where Apple wanted it and Apple's (now) enormous scales of economy.

If you go back and look, the iPod wasn't put out in a low key way. It fit the pattern that Apple has established. The problem was that the MSM didn't really pay them much attention and the timing was really horrible (Oct 2001 release).

I disagree.

What I think might show up is, ahem, an iPod Touch Maxi with a 4" or 5" screen. Which would be identical to an iPod Touch in every way except for being scaled up 30% (including in pixel size) -- like the Nintendo DSi XL.

Target market for this device would be people like me -- i.e. over 45s with presbyopia/fat finger, who want a physically slightly larger device with the same UI and apps as the iPod Touch. A secondary market would be ebooks: the iPhone/iTouch screen is just too small to be comfortable, but a larger screen at the same (retina display resolution) with larger UI elements but scaled text (to display more of it for reading) would be fine. Scaling up the compact iOS interface (iPhone/iTouch) doesn't require redesigning apps in the same way that scaling down the iPad UI would; you can use a small app on a larger screen, it's going in the other direction that's painful.

I suspect the BOM for a larger iTouch would be insignificantly costlier than a regular iTouch, so this would permit them to hit the $300 price point without cutting their margins significantly.

Hasn't Apple been slowly (but steadily) losing market share in the iPod/MP3 player arena since, oh I don't know... 2003?

// does some research:

82% in 2004 74% in 2005 72% in 2007

I see a trend. Okay, the rate of decrease is dropping. Maybe they will settle in around two thirds of the MP3 market, until the next disruptive technology comes along and turns it all on its head again.

I don't know that this is 'winnning the war'. I'm certainly not saying that Apple is in a bad position, they just don't seem to have achieved that Microsoft-esque monopoly death grip that I would associate with 'winning a war'.

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