Samsung’s ‘Galaxy Tab’ Android-based iPad knockoff to be priced over $1000?

AT&T and Samsung today announced AT&T plans to offer the new Samsung Galaxy Tab in time for Christmas.

MacDailyNews Take: So if your kid deserves a lump of coal, you’ll have another option this year besides a Zune.

According to AppleInsider, “Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy Tab will be coming to all four major U.S. wireless carriers.”

The Samsung Galaxy Tab has a 7-inch TFT touch creen, runs Android 2.2 on a 1Ghz Hummingbird processor, offers “Media Hub” – Samsung’s own content service that offers an movies and TV programming along with “Samsung Social Hub,” and dual cameras for video calling.

AT&T will sell the Galaxy Tab in its company owned retail stores and online in the coming months with other distribution partners to be announced at launch. Pricing for the tablet and AT&T data plan options will also be announced closer to the launch date.

“We’re looking forward to expanding our computing device portfolio and giving our AT&T customers more great choices with this innovative device,” said Glenn Lurie, president of AT&T’s emerging devices, in the press release. “By teaming with Samsung Mobile to deliver the Samsung Galaxy Tab, we’re equipping our customers with new and exciting ways to connect to the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network.”

In addition to the numerous Samsung Mobile driven features, the AT&T-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab will also feature AT&T Connection Manager, which automatically connects users to AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots to better manage data usage. AT&T customers will also have access to the entire AT&T national Wi-Fi network.

Electronista reports, “Samsung’s Galaxy Tab will be priced at significantly higher than its main competitor, Apple’s iPad. The Galaxy Tab has shown up in an Amazon UK posting, revealing its price to be £680 with VAT, or about $1,063.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: If that price is anywhere close to being right, for that reason alone and even if heavily subsidized, this fake iPad is DOA, even without being hit with a very well-deserved Apple Trade Dress Infringement lawsuit (at the very least).

Android. Never do with one button that which you can do with four.™

40 Comments

  1. Cue Ballmer: A thousand dollars! Fully subsidized! That’s the most expensive tablet in the world, and it’s got no keyboard, which makes it not a good business tablet.

    I like our strategy, I like our strategy alot…

    In this case, he’d be right, a $1000 SamTab would be DOA.

  2. The pricing is a strategy call. This way the competition doesn’t have to worry, then at the last minute before Christmas, they announce a huge price cut – or a rebate, or something. Competition will be caught unawares.

    Oh, by the way, Samsung. In order for this to work, you have to have something that someone wants to buy!

  3. There will be a less expensive wifi only version as well.

    Apple needs to make a iPad Junior and a larger flatter iPhone to the dimensions to fit into a typical suit pocket.

    It would be the executive rage device to have, drop the corny consumer UI though. Qwack.

  4. Well, cheapest 3G iPad is £529 (16GB). That would require a solid £150 subsidy in order to match an unsubsidised price for the iPad. I don’t know what kind of data plans are offered in the UK with or without subsidy, but I’m sure they aren’t the same, and a plan without a subsidy will be cheaper than those with a subsidy (like AT&T’s $25 plan in the US, vs. $60 for subsidised 3G USB dongle devices).

    There are plenty of major reasons why this Samsung device has little chance against the iPad. The pricing is just one of them.

  5. So if I hold it horizontally, how do I keep from accidentally hitting those buttons along the bottom?

    Won’t apps that are made for 3.5-4 inch screens look fugly and pixellated on this thing? Are developers lining up to make versions of their apps for this screen size?

  6. Chase,

    AT&T doesn’t have a choice. They have customers asking for the iPhone, and for months now, AT&T doesn’t have nearly enough to sell. So, they have to sell other stuff. That is the only reason AT&T is selling as many Android devices as they are today.

  7. I’ve noticed that all Android-based iPad “competitors” top out at around 7 inches for the screen. I think that is because Android (in its current form) is designed for smaller devices and can’t be upscaled adequately for devices with higher screen resolution. All these Android “tablets” are just smart phones with oversized screens.

    So you have Windows 7, which is too bloated to be downscaled to run tablets efficiently, OR Android 2.2 (and below), which is a PDA-class OS that can’t be scaled up effectively beyond a 7-inch screen. The choices for Apple’s lazy (let’s rely on Google or Microsoft) competition are not promising.

  8. “giving our AT&T customers more great choices with this innovative device” that was squarely aimed at morons on this site and in real life who lack critical thinking skills and demand phrases like that – instead of really innovative products. Often the people who use words like ‘innovative’ and ‘competition’ don’t actually have a firm grasp on what qualifies as such easily losing their own argument. If someone really wants innovation and competition – they must call out those that aren’t – to clear the playing field – instead of using their imagination full of wishful thinking.

  9. You can tell who doesn’t understand VAT pricing. VAT (Value Added Tax) is virtually the same thing as a national sales tax. The real price of anything sold in the UK (and most of Europe) is the price minus the VAT.

    I don’t recall how much the VAT amounts to, but seem to recall it being 17%. If accurate then the retail price of this thing is closer to $900, which isn’t that far off from iPad’s most expensive model.

  10. What a turnaround. Used to be no one bought Macs because they thought they cost twice as expensive as PCs. Now we have a POS tablet selling at twice the price of Apple’s iPad.

    Where is Lauren and the other fools from the Microsoft commercials when we need them? I want to see a commercial showing them shopping for a tablet computer and justifying why they don’t select an iPad. Oh, that’s right, Lauren isn’t cool enough to use an iPad.

  11. well i have 4 macbook pro’s at home & a mac pro & 5 iphones between me , wife & kids. but sites with comments like you make people hate Apple, give companies what they deserve and be fare with other products, we need competition, it drives innovation.

  12. Apple’s strategy includes “pricing death” for their competitors.

    There is no way in hell that they can achieve a margin when apple has the advantage of scale.

    Putting the A4 into four separate product lines (iPhone, iPad, iPod, ATV) means one inexpensive CPU!

    Futures contracts on Flash Mems, no MF$ license, no intel markup. Woooot! – Good luck getting under that “umbrella” fellas!

  13. “…not only is AT&T going to sell it, but so is T-Mobile, Sprint, & Verizon.”

    Correction: AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon will offer it for sale. Whether they’ll sell it is different.

  14. “The Samsung Galaxy Tab has a 7-inch TFT touch creen, runs Android 2.2 on a 1Ghz Hummingbird processor”

    So let me get this straight:

    1) Google have made it quite clear that Android is inadequate for iPad type devices.

    2) Therefore, Samsung are coming out with an Android iPad type device.

    3) And the price point is twice that of an iPad.

    Great Samsung! Just don’t ask me to clean up the mess after you splatter on the sidewalk.
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  15. “we need competition, it drives innovation”
    yes, in an ideal world – in a real world – well – for those of us who live in the real world – what have we seen? Apple innovates – literally everyone DUPLICATES – the ipod, ipad, iphone, OS X. I see no competition or innovation, yet I still see sales. Does Apple stop innovating due to lack of competition? No. Innovation lives in a vacuum like success and genius. Most can’t, won’t, don’t. India, China, Japan, Mexico – they’ve been competing against the US for a while now – guess who’s winning? Innovation and success must be inherent within a person, a population, a company, or at least, quickly learned – like survival of the fittest. Competition doesn’t breed innovation – it breeds a bloodbath!
    We now return you to ‘Fantasy Island’ already in progress.

  16. …”ot only is AT&T going to sell it, but so is T-Mobile, Sprint, & Verizon.”

    Nowhere in the article does it say that the Galaxy Tab will be sold on any carrier other than AT&T. At present, it looks lt will be an exclusive (much like virtually every smart phone on the US market today, with a possible exception of some Blackberry models).

  17. @flyer

    if people “hate Apple” because of the comments made here, they do not understand the history of Apple. There are those of us who have been pro-Apple for a long time (loved my first mac, a Beige PowerMac G3) and I took a lot of crap from my friends for buying an “expensive toy computer” from a dying company. The same kind of people who enjoyed Mikey Dell’s comments back in 1997. Today, I give my friends crap while my Macbook sails along nicely (early 2007 model) and they are continuously “tweaking” (you decide what that means) their POS windows machines. The only time I use windows anymore is when I am fixing someone elses problems, or to play an occasional game. Apple users are usually branded as smug, but if you ask me they earned the right to be. I, for one, will not apologize for it!

  18. Where are ALL the articles about how this looks like a giant phone??? Well, maybe all the Tech Pundits have not got the time to post them yet. I’m looking forward to see the Tech Media spammed with them soon.

    My own opinion is that this tablet looks MUCH more like a HUGE PHONE than an iPad.

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