“If Apple launches a smaller iPad tablet to compete with Google’s Nexus 7 Tablet, it won’t be priced quite as low as Google’s $199 tablet, but will still be competitively priced, Channing Smith, Capital Advisors vice president, told CNBC on Thursday,” Cadie Thompson reports for CNBC.
“”It will be a little bit more,” Smith said on ‘Squawk on The Street.’ ‘This is a two-horse race between Google and Apple. Google is trying to find an angle and a lower price point, Apple’s going to come down and match that,'” Thompson reports.
MacDailyNews Take: If this is a two horse race, it’s Secretariat vs. Sham in the Belmont. The #2 tablet in the market is Apple’s iPad 2. Anything running Google’s iOS wannabe Android is in distant third and that’s only because Apple retired the original iPad.
Thompson reports, “Apple’s iPad has taken over more than just the consumer space, Smith said. ‘One of the interesting things that’s happening with Apple and the iPad market is that it’s beginning to broaden.’ Smith said it’s also being offered for schools, the military, government and private enterprise.”
Read more in the full article here.
blah blah blah. Another analyst talking out his ass, figuring the stock price may take a drop when Apple “doesn’t announce the highly-anticipated iPad mini.”
At least – unlike most – he has the market correct…
“One of the interesting things that’s happening with Apple and the iPad market…”
I agree. Apple does come up with great things but they never go for CHEAP… Plus, I usually watch my iPhone or iPod Touch material on the quick (on its screen) or relaxed , streamed to my 32 inch screen with Apple TV. Click and I am watching. Big sound, Big screen from my hand held.
I see a market for a 7 inch device but not for in pocket or for really reading / watching… Maybe for game play. ????
I’m betting on $149.
I’m betting on every company in the ~7″ OtherPad ‘market’ to continue bleeding money. It’s a money pit market for dumdums.
@ Derek Currie “It’s a money pit market for dumdums.”
The only dumdums in this market are the forum lizards who spend their days dispensing snide opinions without any breadth or depth of awareness of the momentous shift in the delivery of traditional reading materials.
In ten years hard copies of literary canons will be fading memories destined for archived collections in libraries. However, the transmission of the written past will still be best accessed in an electronic format that approaches that of the most successful human scale of reading: the modern octavo hardback book. Look it up and do the math of its physical dimensions. Those who read will want the same when curling up with a good iPad.
Then why do most hardcover books come out in a larger size than paperbacks? Like, oh I don’t know, about the size of an iPad screen?
Because that is the optimum size for holding and reading. Paperbacks are smaller sized, with smaller print, and a soft paper cover because it’s cheaper, not because the size is better. Most importantly, it’s an opportunity to sell more books to people who won’t spring for the hard cover version.
That doesn’t matter with the iPad, because book sellers don’t have to worry about the size of the book — it’s all dependent upon the viewing device. So Apple uses the optimum screen size for reading a book: the 9.7″ screen of the iPad.
I read using my iPod Touch every day. I know exactly what you mean. But what does this have to do with an iPad Mini, so called? I have yet to see anyone provide any market justification for the item. No one makes any profit in the current ~7″ OtherPad market and I can’t see Apple doing any better.
$299 is the sweet spot, right between the iPod touch and iPad. Nobody should expect anything less than that.
I tend to agree $299 would be nice!
If Apple offered a space shuttle, it would likely be more than a cost of the choo choo train at the petting zoo.
Seeing is believing. Still, and always.
I bet the price is $249 for a stripped-down version of the iPad 2-1/2 with 8GB of flash storage.
If Apple uses older technology displays, the cost of materials and assembly would be about $150-$170, so the markup would be reasonably comparable to other products.
Of course it won’t be $199. Apple won’t even release a 7 (or 8) -inch tablet, if Apple is meeting or exceeding sales goal with the iPad 2 (at $399) and the “Retina” iPad (at $499 and up).
If Apple can sell as many iPads as it can make at $399 and above, why lower overall profit by making a less profitable model and cannibalize sales from more profitable models. That would be dumb.
At some point, Apple may want to expand iPad sales even more, with additional production capacity. THEN, Apple will release a lower cost model, probably priced at $299. I think that point will be next year, at the earliest.
$199 – Low-end iPod touch
$299 (and up) – Better iPod touch
$299 – Low-end iPad
$399 – Last year’s “big” iPad
$499 (and up) – Latest and greatest iPad
Similar to the MacBook line. Interesting.
If iPad mini will be released, it will hardly cost less than $299 (there is unspoken law at Apple that product margin can not be less than 40%). However, it will be much better than Kindle or even than Google’s Nexus 7 tablet.
zzzzz
If wishes were fishes, we’d all have some fried.
zzzzz
History is littered with business disaster of companies that became unfocussed – trying to be “all things to all people”. Focus is incredibly powerful.
While numerous people jumped up and down, proclaiming the doom of Apple unless they competed with cheap Windoze PCs, Apple ignored them and built their position to #1.
While all the bleeding edge types hailed “the age of the (cheap, small) netbook”, Apple ignored it all and produced the second generation Air — totally destroying the netbook market.
When Uncle Fester scoffed at the price, Apple utterly transformed the mobile industry.
Maybe small tablets are the netbooks of this year. I just don’t see that a small iPad is either wonderful or necessary. If you want to do real work and creation – an iPad. If you want ultimate mobile convenience, an iPhone.
Perhaps, but there’s an awful lot of people who would like a smaller, less-expensive iPad. Parents would buy these for their kids (so the kids would stop borrowing theirs), there’s the mobile game community and there are those who would like an e-book reader primarily. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with Apple acting a bit more market aggressive than they have in the past.
No, there’s not. If size were the issue, Android tablets from Samsung and Amazon and now Google would fly off the shelves because they are cheaper and smaller.
Some people may say they would like a smaller iPad, but that is without trying a smaller 7″ screen size (with 45% less screen real estate). It will feel like what it is — a “tweener”, too big to be a phone but too small to be a proper tablet.
Steve Jobs was right — a 7″ tablet is simply the wrong size.
What analysts demand from Apple and what its customers want are two entirely different things. Analysts may have wanted Apple to make a cheap netbook but all we wanted was a netbook-sized MacBook, which we got. Similarly, the clamor for an iPad mini among the Apple fanbase is not borne of some irrational fear that smaller tablets will kill iPad market share. We simply want a smaller iPad. If Amazon never released the Kindle Fire and Google never made the Nexus 7, I would still desire a smaller, lighter iPad.
And what Apple’s customers want is not what Apple believes is best. Apple customers didn’t demand an iPod or iPhone (demands for an iPad were out there, but only because the iPhone was released first and people could then see the promise of a properly-done tablet).
GM went belly up due to worrying too much about what “customers want” rather than letting real car pros design great products that advanced what people could do with their vehicles.
Apple focuses on what it can do to make solutions to people’s everyday chores/problems. Capitulating to customer or analyst “demand” for a 7″ iPad doesn’t fit that plan. And it’s just plain dangerous to start listening to customers for your product planning.
I think there is a market for a mini iPad or a bigger iPod .
We will be using a POS system by Ambur for our restruant, it uses ipads at the hub and waiters use iPods , The only negative we have heard from other clients is that the iPods are to small
4″ telescoping screen made of magic crystal, 27.3gb RAM 4kb storage, completely biodegradable and it makes its own cause- all this for 5¢
The iPod mini was the number one selling music player when Apple introduced the Nano. Just because a product is a top seller, does not mean Apple won’t do it. If one looks at the history of successful attacks on dominate products, the attacker’s most successful ate those that do not compete head on, but offer an often less capable product, cheaper, that sells to a new audience/market. Once a firm foothold is established, it is then easier to erode the upscale position. Apple knew this with the iPod and they know it with the iPad. A 7.85 inch iPad mini would be a great strategic move, and will likely happen. A price of $299 is likely.
The problem with your argument is that successful attacks depended upon a price advantage (“less capable product, cheaper”). But the company still has to make a profit selling such a product.
No company can produce a tablet in the $200 price range and make a profit. Not a 7″ tablet, not supported by associated product sales (Amazon, Google). Not even Apple.
This $200 iPad mini is a pipe dream, and frankly makes no sense because it doesn’t solve any problem. Why do people need a tablet sized in between an iPhone/iPod touch and an iPad?
They don’t.