“A more serious challenge is expected soon from Samsung, one of the most competent Korean manufacturers,” Hendon writes. “The Galaxy 7, pictured below, is close to a formal announcement that it will be on dealer shelves sometime in September.”
“Speaking of 7” screens, Apple is reportedly readying a 7” version of the iPad for the Christmas selling season… If Apple brings out a 7” iPad, it will put severe price pressure on most of the other vendors in this space,” Hendon writes. “Apple will begin with a large scale production run, so the economies of scale are all on Apple’s side for now. They will probably stay that way for a long time to come.”
MacDailyNews Note: For further reading the how Apple pressures other vendors, please read:
• Why Apple’s iPad ‘killers’ are already dead – July 23, 2010
• Apple has already killed the iPad, iPhone ‘killers’ – July 22, 2010
Hendon continues, “Apple, as usual, was way ahead of the curve in moving to this new form factor, and now the rest must play catch up — never an easy thing to do when you give your competitor almost a year’s head start.”
Read more in the full article here.
No kiddin!
What, Vapourwaire™ announcements aren’t actual, functioning products?
That’s all we’ve heard or seen.
Vaporware Announcements.
Wait until next year. Ours will be better. Q4, honest!
I’m not buying this 7″ iPad rumor. I thinking that there will an improved version of the current size before beginning the cannibalization with a smaller, lower price 7″ model.
Spark, maybe Apple will introduce a smaller version dubbed “Sir Isaac.”
The press keeps talking about the lead Apple has and how it hot the jump on the market. That’s false, how many tablet/touch screen devices have been produced in the last TEN years. The competition to Apple had the lead, they LOST it.
Blame it on software, hardware whatever but until Apple said ” here, like this” no designer seemed capable of taking the form of touch screens to the next level.
Apple is ahead because it bothers to ge creative.
Microsoft has a lot of talent, but their leadership ( may Ballmer stay till the end) is without vision. So no one is allowed to be creative in Redmond.
With the exception of devices they can’t seem to sell for a profit, xbox
Who wants a smaller iPad? Bigger is better.
I want at least twelve inches.
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It’s because there’s absolutely no imagination at Apple’s “competitors”. They fumble around nearly randomly until Apple comes out with a new product, then they desperately try to copy it.
It makes me wonder how we managed to advance technologically at all in these product lines before Apple got involved. And then I remember what pre-Apple electronics were like. Electronic devices had a reputation for having too many buttons, being difficult for non-tech-geeks to use, and for not always doing what the user wanted.
Apple’s competitors have never known how to create a high-quality, usable device. But that used to be okay, because none of their competitors at the time did either. Sony and the like would produce the new XK11-T100D widget, it would have a million buttons on it, and we’d pat ourselves on the back for being able to figure it out enough to use it.
Then Apple came along and changed the game, creating high-quality devices designed along how people actually think, devices anyone can use, with interfaces so simple that they seem obvious in retrospect. And the competitors are utterly lost. Because they never learned how to do any of that.
Apple’s current competition will never catch up, mark my words. They just don’t have it in them. Apple’s true competition will come in the future, most likely from start-ups founded by former Apple employees.
——RM
I was at the Hong Kong computer fair today and saw no tablet device from any PC company. Just more cheap net books. However, there was an iPad clone of a 6 inch tablet. The sales lady kept stabbing at an app icon about 10 times but nothing happened. She did multiple swipes on the screen and still nothing happened. Then, at last, the 15th swipe did the trick. Then a new window opened and she started stabbing at another tabbed icon multiple times. I became suicidal just watching her do the demo to a crowd. It brings back awful memories when I was using Windows.
Uninformed idiots! The iPad was developed PRIOR to the iPhone and iPod touch. Steve Jobs realized it would make a great phone, put it on hold and created the iPhone using the iPad research and development work.
These other tablets are several YEARS behind. Not several months! AND PEOPLE BUY MORE THAN APPLE HARDWARE WHEN THEY BUY ANY iOS DEVICE!
THERE ARE NO iOS DEVICE KILLERS!
Why is there an assumption that a 7″ iPad must be much cheaper than the current one? I would suggest the prices will be very similar.
Nobody is able to do anything new except Apple. Having to wait for Jobs to deliver consumer-ready brilliant products before trying to copy them, tends to put the competition pretty far behind. Add to it economies of scale, plus Apple’s exclusive technologies like the iOS, the A4, liquid metal, etc, and the other guys have a mountain to climb.
@Macaday,
iPod nano is cheaper than the standard iPod. A 17″ TV is cheaper than its larger brethren. I think it is reasonable to believe that the majority of the buying public would perceive a 7″ iPad, with smaller screen and perhaps smaller storage capacity as being of less value than the larger model. Apple has little motivation to produce a cheaper version of the iPad.
I’ve always wanted to see a slightly larger iPad. It would make typing on it a little bit easier. If I’m not mistaken, the landscape keyboard is just a tad smaller than a standard keyboard.
The incompetent competition makes Apple look Great
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Without “them” Apple products would look like ??
Vision & leadership = Apple
It ain’t too shabby to have Zero debt and $45 Billion in Cash
R&D can and will go on for decades!!!!
!!!! Buy AAPL stocks!!!!!
I would love an iPod Touch with similar design flourishes and feature set as the iPhone 4, retina display, gyro, cameras, etc. Plus similarly updated iPads at the current size and one at 7″.
If Apple did come out with a 7″ starting at $299, I’ll get at least one maybe two.
It was reported today elsewhere that the Kindle is outselling the iBooks store at a rate of of about 60:1.
I own both- enjoy both but prefer the Kindle app and device for reading.
@Kindle Killer-not
Don’t conflate the Kindle Reader with the Kindle app
The 60:1 sales figure is for content. Lot’s of people with iPod touch, iPad and iPhone use the Kindle app to buy content for their non-Kindle hardware.
Amazon can, and undoubtably will, continue selling digital books using the Kindle brand long after the Kindle Reader is relegated to the Museum of Obsoleted Tech Hardware.
The only iDevice that is capable of ‘killing’ Apple’s iDevices is the next generation of the same device to replace it with.
Like music sold through iTMS, books sold through the iBook store are not intended to generate lots of revenue. The real revenue is in the hardware people buy to enjoy that content.
Samsung is in a good position to create these Apple knockoffs because it is good enough to make something viably functional while at the same time lacking the corporate dignity and self-respect to not blatantly steal and pirate Apple’s ideas. This is the Korean way: shamelessly pirate others’ ideas to take advantage of its cheap labor in producing acceptable alternatives at much cheaper prices.
All Kindles are on backorder for next month. Sold out.
Spinoza2 is dead on.
Korean companies are good at creating knock offs of real products. Which is different from China which makes fakes and counterfeits. While Samsung is good at creating lookalikes like the new “Galaxy S” I think they are deeply worried and scared about the iphone cutting their business in Korea which is a very insulated market but the iPhone has broken through here in a big big way.
Have tried and check the “Current” Tablets iPad clones. They are more like XL PMP players than a tablet.No access to a real store. Etc.
You cant make a resistive touch screen act as good as a capacitive touch screen. One reason why you see people literately shoving there fingers through the screen to get a response.
Have tried the Augen… Example of cutting too much!
They just dont learn. They are trying to shoot down the current iPad gen. By the time they actually hit the shelves. Apple will be on 2nd Gen! To shoot down an moving target. You must lead the target. Shoot where it will be when the bullets get there.