MacDailyNews Take: James Brehm, you’ve just been iCal’ed.
Goldman continues, “Though Apple hasn’t released any details about its tablet — that unveiling is expected to take place on Jan. 26, according to a New York Times report — analysts who have been briefed on the device say it will run apps like the iPhone and iPod Touch do, but the tablet will be better suited for watching movies and reading. ‘The Apple tablet will have a beautiful user interface, it will have a pleasing aesthetic and will be marketed well,’ said Chris Collins, senior consumer research analyst at Yankee Group. ‘But at the end of the day, we’re still taking about a smart phone with a bigger screen… Netbooks won the battle but lost the war… Eventually, people either went to a smartphone or a notebook. Tablets will also generate a lot of interest initially, but they will ultimately suffer a similar fate.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Blind prognostication is the practice of idiots.
Goldman continues, “Apple will likely need to charge around $800 for the device, analysts say, which could relegate the tablet to ‘niche’ status like Apple’s expensive line of Macintosh computers.”
“Brehm and Collins argued that the there will be some compelling uses for the tablet, including note-taking for students or examining electronic health records for physicians. Apple fans will also bite because, well, it’s an Apple product, and it’s bound to be really cool,” Goldman reports. “‘The market will be there, but this will definitely be more of a niche product,’ said Frost & Sullivan’s Brehm, who was Gateway’s tablet product manager a decade ago.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: That a former “Gateway tablet product manager” turned “analyst” lacks even the smidgen of imagination required to spare himself from future ridicule is wholly unsurprising.
• “We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. [Apple] are not going to catch up.” – Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, April 01, 2008
• “Microsoft, with Windows Mobile/ActiveSync, Nokia with Intellisync, and Motorola with Good Technology have all fared poorly in the enterprise. We have no reason to expect otherwise from Apple.” – Peter Misek, Canaccord Adams analyst, March 07, 2008
• “What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… Apple’s stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 seems ambitious.” – Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, May 21, 2007
• Motorola’s then-Chairman and then-CEO Ed Zander said his company was ready for competition from Apple’s iPhone, due out the following month. “How do you deal with that?” Zander was asked at the Software 2007 conference. Zander quickly retorted, “How do they deal with us?” – Ed Zander, May 10, 2007
• “The iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off.” – Gundeep Hora, CoolTechZone Editor-in-Chief, April 02, 2007
• “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007
• “Even if [the iPhone] is opened up to third parties, it is difficult to see how the installed base of iPhones can reach the level where it becomes a truly attractive service platform for operator and developer investment.” – Tony Cripps, Ovum Service Manager for Mobile User Experience, March 14, 2007
• “I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” – David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007
• “There’s an old saying — stick to your knitting — and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting… I think people overreacted to it — there was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it.” – Greg Winn, Telstra’s operations chief, February 15, 2007
• “Consumers are not used to paying another couple hundred bucks more just because Apple makes a cool product. Some fans will buy [iPhone], but for the rest of us it’s a hard pill to swallow just to have the coolest thing.” – Neil Strother, NPD Group analyst, January 22, 2007
• “I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone… I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful)… So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.” – Richard Sprague, Microsoft Senior Marketing Director, January 18, 2007
• “The iPhone’s willful disregard of the global handset market will come back to haunt Apple.” – Tero Kuittinen, RealMoney.com, January 18, 2007
• “[Apple’s iPhone] is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.” – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007
• “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007
• “iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. I mean, the Blackjack from Samsung, the Blackberry, obviously, you know kind of pushes this thing, the Palm, all these… And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, January 13, 2007
• “I am pretty skeptical. I don’t think [iPhone] will meet the fantastic predictions I have been reading. For starters, while Apple basically established the market for portable music players, the phone market is already established, with a number of major brands. Can Apple remake the phone market in its image? Success is far from guaranteed.” – Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, January 11, 2007
• “Apple will launch a mobile phone in January, and it will become available during 2007. It will be a lovely bit of kit, a pleasure to behold, and its limited functionality will be easy to access and use. The Apple phone will be exclusive to one of the major networks in each territory and some customers will switch networks just to get it, but not as many as had been hoped. As customers start to realise that the competition offers better functionality at a lower price, by negotiating a better subsidy, sales will stagnate. After a year a new version will be launched, but it will lack the innovation of the first and quickly vanish. The only question remaining is if, when the iPod phone fails, it will take the iPod with it.” – Bill Ray, The Register, December 26, 2006
• “The economics of something like [an Apple iPhone] aren’t that compelling.” – Rod Bare, Morningstar analyst, December 08, 2006
• “Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail…. Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits… When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players. Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don’t exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren’t clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good.” – Michael Kanellos, CNET, December 07, 2006
• “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” – Ed Colligan, Palm CEO, November 16, 2006
Haha then I spell grammar wrong.
John C. Dvorak has mellowed quite a bit on Apple, as have many others. I guess having to eat crow has that effect.
What a great collection of quotes MDN.
” … a lovely bit of kit …”
That’s funny. That’s what I’m going to say from now on when someone asks, “So, how do you like your iPhone?”
I think the iTablet will come out as something in between the iPhone and the MacBook Air in terms of making a broad mass-market splash. It won’t be the “niche” product that the MacBook Air has become, but it also won’t generate the massive market penetration like the iPhone or iPod.
Unless of course Apple can make this thing into that universal media device–iPod, mini TV, ereader, magazine/newspaper reader, etc etc., and sell it at a price point that would foster broad mass-market appeal. For this to happen Apple would have to price such a device in the $400 range, tops.
If anyone could pull this off, it would be Apple…
Most of the commenters were talking about the $600 iPhone when they said what they said. Most were right.
Apple found out that they were right and quickly hid most of the iPhone cost.
Apple learned to play the cell phone game and the rest is history.
Still, making fun of commenters who said a $600 iPhone wouldn’t cut it does not seem fair.
Once again, MDN proves itself to be intellectually dishonest and/or mentally deficient. Cell phones had a substantial market before the release of the iPhone. Tablet computers do not. Defending the potential market for Apple’s presumed tablet by citing similar pessimistic prognostications against the iPhone to note how wrong they were is a strawman; it bears no relationship to tablet computing whatsoever. Your blind and weaselly assurance is no better than those you seek to undermine.
“…analysts who have been briefed on the device …”
Briefed? By whom, another “analyst”?
@ effwerd,
You’re not fooling us Mr. Ballmer!
It will be very big and change computing for the general consumer. It will be the machine of choice for entertainment computing: video, email, web surfing, controlling an entertainment system.
I am wondering if it will be big with imaging people who use tablets and a stylus now. I wonder if there will be enough processing power and RAM. Probably not; at least not at first.
Another delusional moron who thinks he’s an analyst.
” Cell phones had a substantial market before the release of the iPhone. Tablet computers do not.”
But- everyone else has _tried_…. And miserable little pieces of plastic crap they all are. And, oh yeah, they run windoze. End of that story. Mp3 players were out there in force, too, before the iPod. Niche market. It ain’t the game, it’s how you play it.
Now if only Apple would consider doing something for curling, or cricket….
Unless anyone is smarter than the the No.1 CEO of the decade… as in Steve Jobs’ own words:
“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Like apps on the iPhone, the Apple tablet could have uses that we haven’t even considered yet.
So far just a few things it can replace:
– A netbook $300
– A kindle $260
– An ipod touch $199 (granted not as compact)
– Portable movie player $150
– A loads more that the genius at Apple will surprise us with
so far its worth $909
So the Mac is a niche product? 20% of all computers sold to consumers in the U.S. today are Macs. Hardly a niche product.
Wow the lemmings really came out for this article. Did any of you read the article or just the MDN take? I could summarize the article as “The tablet will sell well, though not as well as the iPhone. If Apple charges too much it will be relegated to being a niche product.”
What I like is how the naysayers tend to think that only the Mac fanboy crowd would buy an iPhone. The Apple Store in the mall has paid off in spades for Apple.
The tablet is the next step in the evolution of print. Sure, Apple isn’t first, but the experience will be First Class and drive everyone else back to the drawing boards.
The tablet after the tablet ought to be really interesting, as in mobile “paper.” Can’t fight the future…
My prediction:) it will be big…. And it will be like a storm agan. But in different way to the iPhone.
Phones- every ppl need and use one, so it went like a storm.
Portable computers: not every one need ones, howver, it will start to make BIG impact to a number of things:
1. Chaning the Media businesses models and consumers usage style and habits bcoz of this device and apple potentials media channel contracts
2. Portable computer design models
I believe the tablet would impact the overall design of portable computers, we should see laptops, netbooks coming to more tablet designs ( yes, there are already lots of hybrids n stuff) so companies would combine the 3 designs into one according to their own concepts.
It will be a bigger wave than the iPhone I believe, but we won’t see as clear as the iPhone did
“What was it that these people couldn’t see? The first iPhone was a shiny little gem that people wanted to carry and showoff.”
@AppleJack, I think you nailed it. People like us kept our Macs at home on our desks for the most part (especially in the 90s). Your friends always thought “the Mac can’t really be any better than the PC I’m using”.
The iPod and iPhone are “outdoor cats”. We take them places — use them in public. Friends and colleagues see them and understand they’re better. They sell themselves.
I suspect the shift from desktops to notebooks had a similar effect on the Mac market (but in a smaller way). It’s impossible to ignore the difference when you’re actually holding an Apple product.
It won’t be a tablet Mac.
It will be an Color E-book Reader Plus.
The Plus will be Portable Bigger Screen Gaming Device and Media Player that lets you read newspapers and magazines.
Nobody will think they need one until they pick one up and use it.
The iPod all over again.
These prognostications are similar to those that came out when Apple started opening retail stores. Relevant quote:
“I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake,” says David A. Goldstein, president of researcher Channel Marketing Corp”. (Business Week 5/21/01)
For other good quotes regarding Apple’s demise, macobserver has an Apple Death Knell Counter: http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/index.shtml
. ‘But at the end of the day, we’re still taking about a smart phone with a bigger screen… Netbooks won the battle but lost the war… Eventually, people either went to a smartphone or a notebook. Tablets will also generate a lot of interest initially, but they will ultimately suffer a similar fate.'”
You can say what you want, but this is really the heart of the problem. Apple will have to deliver not only the device, but define for consumers the function specific for this device that resonates with consumers. If any company is capable of doing this, it is Apple.
I have to admit that I feel into this way of thinking, but that I realized that transformative or defining technologies break the rules of the market as we know it. I am going to give Apple the benefit of the doubt that they can deliver something that no one could have predicted. Not only because of their product history, but I their knowledge in OS, in house applications, and experience with the App store. Those combined can point Apple to a breakthrough device, rather than just a ‘tweener device.
MDN, happy new year and thanks for reminding us of all these wonderful quotes.
1. how many of them (other than ballmer) still have a job, or the job they had when they spewed?
2. how many of them (other than ballmer) have an iphone?
3. how many of them (other than ballmer) have wives or children that own iphones?
what all these people miss in their prognostication is they are talking about a product and apple is selling an experience. the device is just the piece you hold in your hand. the experience interacts with the matter between your ears and in your chest.
original mac, newton, ipod, iphone, apple stores are all about experience. in the case of the newton, the technology was not quite ripe enough. apple and steve jobs learned form that. they learned about differentiation, supply chain, and aspirational demand. this is what has led to their cash horde.
what is different about apple and all of these other companies is the culture that is succeeding today is bred in. in these other companies, it is layered on by paying consultants to preach to executives. these same executives are like those on MDN’s list. the future looks bright for apple.
Christina Wiley likes this.
When you have a tablet that is four times the size of an iPhone you don’t just do the same things on a larger screen – you do new and different things…
@ ChrissyOne,
Say hi for me when you see her.
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What “analysts who have been briefed” exactly? More like anal-ysts trying to “best guess” Apple… Same semi-analytical spew as usual.