'iPad Mini' Pricing to Begin at Approximately $329
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
The big feature of the Note 2 is the stylus. That's what I wanted to try. So I picked it up and the first screen was this home screen with three buttons. One was for the Notes app. I tapped it, and it took me to an explanatory page about the app. I started scribbling. Nothing. Looked for a "try the app" button. Nothing. Backed out, clicked the "explore this device" button instead. Looked for a notes app on the home screen. Nothing. Clicked "applications". Greeted with 30 apps per screen. On the second page, found a "Notes" app and a "Memo" app. Guessed it was the memo app. Guessed incorrectly, that didn't support the stylus. Finally opened up the Notes app. Scribbled. It was laggy.
I can't understand how other companies can keep sucking so much at this when Apple has it figured out. It's just shocking.
I wanted to like the Nexus 7, but I find it borderline useless for everything including simply browsing the web. (There's a lot to like about the Chrome browser, but it's simply too fiddly to resize text all the time.) Overally, I find the Kindle Fire to be a superior device to the Nexus 7 (which is pretty depressing given the Nexus 7 is a year newer, ostensibly has better hardware, is running a far more modern OS, and was more expensive).
I think Apple is going to clean everyone's clocks with the new devices, even if they're a bit expensive. $330 for a really good device is a way better deal than $200 for a piece of junk.
I use it for reading ebooks, some browsing the web, reading email, managing my calendar, and very occasional casual gaming. It's fast and responsive, and as far as seeing it, the display is sharp and bright. It's not an issue (which is saying a lot--I'm legally blind).
The display and responsiveness are no better than the iPad, and the retina display on the new iPad is a bit crisper, but I prefer the 7in form factor (lighter, easier to hold/use with one hand) and the customization options that Android offers over iOS.
I know Google had a lot of problems with them initially, some of which effected performance and display... maybe you got a dud?
Bear in mind, it's not just me. My daughters would rather wait for an iPad to recharge than use the alternatives (even when the same content is on them).
Do you mean that (like Mobile Safari) Chrome does not reflow text, so that you cannot make the text big enough to read without making the text expand past the edge of the window, so you have to scroll each line of text horizontally?
I think his point was more than you have to resize text on the Nexus 7 because the screen is much smaller than an iPad. Pretty much every page on the Nexus will require a pinch zoom and a tap before you start reading.
I have the Nexus 7, iPad, Surface, and the (smaller potential) iPad, as viable options. I also looked into Asus' Transformer line.
My Macbook is on its last legs. I purchased an iMac for home use earlier this year. I want to replace the Macbook with something equally as productive. I mainly use it for email and managing customer relations.
The Surface Pro entices me, but lacks concrete information. Nexus 7 has a great price, and I like Jelly Bean. It is a little smaller than I would like. The iPad is a solid piece of hardware, but im not the biggest iOS fan. With that said a cheaper tablet, bigger than the Nexus 7 and smaller than the iPad, would be great. I hope the smaller iPad can fill that niche.
Then I go back to the Surface... I'm tempted by the ability to load to apps on the same screen. The keyboard integration looks very slick.
Too many choices for me. As a consumer, I feel like the tablet market is what I dreamed of as a kid.
As a side note, I am unsure if the Surface Pro fits in with the rest of the group. It aims to be more of a "laptop" computing experience with a touch/stylus input method. Which I like, but am skeptical on the practicality of it.
I should wait a few more months...
The Surface is almost guaranteed to have great support for a long time given MS's history. Keyboard probably isn't as nice (it's squishy, right?) but much more compact than a Transformer keyboard.
The 7" form factor clearly has value to customers over the predominant 10" form factor. Every review of them touches on how much nicer they are to read on and carry around.
7" tablets will be kids first computers, they'll replace the full iPad for lightweight POS installations, they'll be the go-to for portable employee applications, they'll sell into schools like crazy, and they'll make good purse-able travel iPads.
Plus there's that media ecosystem, that OS, that app stack, that customer familiarity, and that third party universe. No readily identifiable competitive weaknesses.
The clearest example is the iPod Touch vs the iPhone. From a geek's perspective, they are the essentially same product, differing only in the presence or absence of a cellular radio. The iPhone is more than twice the price of the iPod Touch, which is a scandalous mark-up for the addition of what we know to be a relatively inexpensive component.
From the perspective of nearly everyone who has actually bought an iPhone, the two devices are completely different - the iPhone is a smartphone, the iPod Touch is just an MP3 player with games.
That's why Apple are the most valuable company on earth.
http://www.quora.com/Business/What-is-the-most-valuable-priv...
This isn't really true though—Apple clearly gimps the ipod-touch in various small-but-annoying ways. I don't know whether this is just to keep costs down, or to encourage people to buy the iphone unless they really, really, can't afford it.
For instance, the camera on the ipod-touch 4g is downright awful, whereas that on the iphone4 is quite decent. Lack of GPS functionality is another example.
Two totally different markets. Carrier subsidies inflate the price of SmartPhones because the consumer is not paying the full price up front. They don't even know what the real price is. The carriers would certainly like to negotiate prices lower however the iPhone owns enough of the market, by itself, that Apple has the upper hand. A carrier who doesn't offer the iPhone these days is in trouble. This is true of other types of SmartPhones too. Having the latest and greatest Samsung phone is valuable to the carrier as well. So they pay a bit more to lure in customers with nicer phones. Don't feel too bad for the carrier's though because they still make quite a lot of money in this arrangement too.
I have no idea how this works out in other countries... $649 is a lot to pay for a phone when you can buy a galaxy nexus for $349 at retail!
I just have a tough time believing they are going to put out a 7" model for a price that is within $70 of the 10" model. Also, $329 is a weird price for Apple. They are very much into $x49 and $x99 prices. I could see $299, but $329 is just odd for a base price. It seems like the speculation that led people to believe the original iPad was going to be $999. It also seems like a serious deviation from the iPod / iPhone strategy.
But now we have something between the iPhone and the Ipad ? Seriously.... I hope for them they will find people who will want to buy it (not only because it's a new Apple product of course...), but it's hard to believe, even for these marketing genius.
Yeah the price is a lot less but many people who buy Apple products are probably pretty price insensitive, and there is def people who would prefer the smaller size
- Apple has traditionally been willing to eat into their margin a little bit when facing competition & establishing a new market
- We know that the Nexus 7 & Fire HD at $200 don't make a profit for Google & Amazon, but they do make a small profit for ASUS & Quanta.
- According to rumours the iPad Mini is lower spec'd than the Nexus 7 (1024x768 screen rather than 720p screen), primarily, but it will probably also have less RAM, dual core vs quad core CPU, etc.
- Apple gets better prices for their components than their competitors do.
- combining the 2 above suggests that a $160 cost base is a reasonable guess. (the BOM would be less than that).
- $250 gives a very Apple-like margin of 40% given the above.
Apple is having trouble with rumour control. The traditional mechanism to deal with rumours if they can't be squelched at the source is disinformation. Given their supply chain, it's quite difficult to control the hardware rumours, but price rumours seem a lot easier to control with disinformation.
For a very long time, I was convinced that Apple would never do a smaller iPad. What's in it for them? The profit margins will certainly be smaller. Then I realized: if they wanted to completely own the tablet market, they need a cheap option that's competitive with the Kindle Fire and co.
$249 gives Apple almost complete dominance in the tablet market. $329 does not.
Unless it's about dominance, this is a pointless niche product and a waste of time.
Look at what Apple's been doing with iPhone pricing for the past few years. If you're in the US, you can now get a "free" iPhone 4. That's absolutely a move to seize the low end of the market, even if they're not making as much per device.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/07/22/apple-w...
Per this logic, $299 seems like the best bet. This is $100 lower than the point where iPad and iPod prices presently converge ($399 for either a 64GB Touch or a 16GB iPad 2). This move would also mean dropping the price of the 64GB Touch to $299 (where the 32GB model currently sits) and dropping the 32 GB to $249, which is where you find the 160 GB iPod classic ($100 above the new nano).
how so?
If you want to explore other options, the 9" Kindle Fire HD at $299 or 9" Nook HD at $269, or 7" Nexus 7 are similarly pretty competent. Perhaps Apple is trying to mitigate the cannibalization of the larger iPad, but this does seem expensive.
I bought my Nexus 7 because it fits in my pockets. Everywhere I would have a bag with a bigger tablet with me I would have my big notebook anyway.
Having passed on every iPad to date specifically because of the size issue, I'm really excited by this one.
E.g. the new iPad may have the iPad 3's camera or GPU.
The iPod touch is very competitive, it has been around for years with pretty much zero competition. iPods were very competitive for years, again primarily with no one being able to compete. The iPad has always been competitively priced.
I doubt the iPad Air will be as competitive in price as the others, I just don't see a $199 level, but I do not agree that Apple is not competitively priced in mobile.
Apple Stores are a big part of Apple marketing. The service received a these store can range from exceptional to terrible. They don't pay the people who do technical support or work in retail big bucks either.
I am not surprised Apple is doing so well, given the premium they charge for their devices.
The fact that they hire those people at all represents an expense and a service that Android manufacturers just don't have. The operating costs for an Apple store are probably higher than Nexus 7 retailers like Gamestop, Sam's Club, Staples, Office Depot, or Kmart--and the level of service is largely a step ahead as well. Either way, it's still an expense that isn't accounted for in manufacturing margin, which was the original point of the exercise.
Apple uses its giant scale to literally buy up all supply of lots of components and other resources (factory output, air freight, you name it). It's tough to compete.
Walk into the store and you'll see that the best phones from both Apple and Samsung cost the same amount.