Apple Considering Lower-Priced iPad Mini at $199-$249?

who would want to buy a Ferrari for $200,000 when there is a 'less expensive' Ferrari that does the same thing, the same way, with the same features for $50,000?

lets see.

on a car analogy.

bmw
m6 convertible
$116,845

128i convertible
$39,245

yeah stop with the car analogies please. there is a market for both it's just how you play with it.
 
Honestly?!
It makes sense. Except for the A5-chip part, which I believe it is a far too underpowered processor for a 2013 device IMO.
 
Imagine how many will sell at that price.

Plus it's just a big iPod. At least until it gets retina.
 
Technology is getting cheaper. They priced the mini way to high to start with. Now they are looking for cheaper iphones and ipads (the meat and potatoes of their lineup) Because if you look at things like the galaxy 7 tab for $150-$180 it does just fine for half the price.

Yes but the margins on the Galaxy 7 are MUCH slimmer too. That's my point. Apple can't make a less expensive mini w/o compromising quality or margins. And neither would be a plus for Apple.

Samsung is a huge conglomerate so it can afford to have slim margins in one category and make it up in another. Samsung appliances for example can get very expensive. Apple is a smaller company with a small product lineup that survives on fat margins. It can't afford to have loss leaders like Samsung.

Also, remember Android is open source. Samsung has to spend minimal R&D on the OS, unlike Apple. That cost is priced into iOS devices.

And again, I'm not sure how you can say with a straight face that Apple priced the mini too high to start with if they sold 12 MILLION units just in the last 3 months of 2012. Logically, you cannot. Another 15 MILLION sold in Q2, and estimated 12 MILLION more this quarter even with the expectation of a refresh coming soon.

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I mean, who would want to buy a Ferrari for $200,000 when there is a 'less expensive' Ferrari that does the same thing, the same way, with the same features for $50,000?

Not sure I understand your analogy here. You don't seem to understand the psyche of a Ferrari buyer. They aren't looking for value, they are looking to impress someone be it their neighbor, friend, client, girlfriend, or him/herself ;). Ferrari could make two models that are similar, one being much less expensive, but those buyers are trading off the model name as much as anything else.

Also I wouldn't quite put Apple up there with Ferrari. Very few people can afford one & they are for the most part custom made cars. Apple products are luxury items, but still mass market. They are more like a 3 series BMW, C class Merc, or A5 Audi.
 
You simply can't make a product of the quality that customers demand from Apple at a profit margin that investors demand from every company but Amazon at the prices that Wall Street hack journalists insist must be met.
 
lets see.

on a car analogy.

bmw
m6 convertible
$116,845

128i convertible
$39,245

yeah stop with the car analogies please. there is a market for both it's just how you play with it.

I tried... I am known for bad analogies, but the point still stands.

But anyway...

I had an Audi A4 a number of years ago, and ran into a Volkswagen something or other that looked exactly like the A4. I mean exactly, aside from the emblems. I could have saved a lot of money by getting the VW... That was what I was thinking when I tried to do another bad analogy. Nailed it I guess. :eek::)

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... Apple is a smaller company with a small product lineup that survives on fat margins. It can't afford to have loss leaders like Samsung.

Also, remember Android is open source. Samsung has to spend minimal R&D on the OS, unlike Apple. That cost is priced into iOS devices.

And that is why Apple can't afford to under price their products and shouldn't try to flood the market and cover all potential buyers needs. There is a lot of hidden gold in that price, meaning that we Apple customers didn't pay $300.00 for OS X 10.8, and don't pay hundreds of dollars for IOS updates.

Not sure I understand your analogy here. You don't seem to understand the psyche of a Ferrari buyer. They aren't looking for value, they are looking to impress someone be it their neighbor, friend, client, girlfriend, or him/herself ;). Ferrari could make two models that are similar, one being much less expensive, but those buyers are trading off the model name as much as anything else.

Also I wouldn't quite put Apple up there with Ferrari. Very few people can afford one & they are for the most part custom made cars. Apple products are luxury items, but still mass market. They are more like a 3 series BMW, C class Merc, or A5 Audi.

OK, I do bad analogies better than anyone else... I did get hit with the 'You buy Macs because you think you're special, and probably have a freezer full of Hagendaz and used to drive a Saab'. 'Um, no', I said, 'I love the ice cream, but couldn't get the Saab fixed here so I sold it' and walked away leaving them looking like an *******. That was after leading into this slam from them showing the Mac and all of the incredible things it can do out of the box. Some people are just not going to get it. Whatever... I'm not subhuman because I own Macs.
 
You simply can't make a product of the quality that customers demand from Apple at a profit margin that investors demand from every company but Amazon at the prices that Wall Street hack journalists insist must be met.
While there certainly are limits of what you can do with technology, these limits are only there, because products target a certain customer base at a price the customer is willing to pay. Tablets are going to be the future and while Apple may insist on their current very high profit margins, they cannot keep them that high across the board, because there will inherently be an increasing amount of offerings with sufficient performance and price for the masses. One thing you have to consider is that production costs are going down constantly and the iPad mini doesn't have anything that i would consider cutting edge in it already.

Apple doesn't want stagnating marketshare for one of their finest products. There's a solution for almost everything in this world apart from some serious illnesses or that we eventually have to die. You just have to be willing to make some compromises, like with the AppleTV, that is an incredibly good product for a very good price.
 
I have yet to find a belt-attaching protective case to hold an iPad Mini on my side. Does anyone know there is one?
 
If it sells for $229 it will be Apple's best selling iPad. Sales of the full size will fall drastically, IMHO. People will buy because of price.

Indeed, Toyota sells many Corollas. However, Toyota also sells many Camrys (Camries? Whatever). There's room in the market for a successful and strong-selling higher-performance variant.
 
Yes but the margins on the Galaxy 7 are MUCH slimmer too. That's my point. Apple can't make a less expensive mini w/o compromising quality or margins. And neither would be a plus for Apple.

Samsung is a huge conglomerate so it can afford to have slim margins in one category and make it up in another. Samsung appliances for example can get very expensive. Apple is a smaller company with a small product lineup that survives on fat margins. It can't afford to have loss leaders like Samsung.

Also, remember Android is open source. Samsung has to spend minimal R&D on the OS, unlike Apple. That cost is priced into iOS devices.

And again, I'm not sure how you can say with a straight face that Apple priced the mini too high to start with if they sold 12 MILLION units just in the last 3 months of 2012. Logically, you cannot. Another 15 MILLION sold in Q2, and estimated 12 MILLION more this quarter even with the expectation of a refresh coming soon.



Anytime you introduce new technology into the market of course people are going to go crazy over it. Apple has some of the best marketing I have ever seen.. Lets imagine why. A screen thats smaller, a resolution that is less and yet people are okay with buying basically the first ipad all over again in spec (not entirely but you get my point.)

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/29/tech/mobile/samsung-spanking-apple/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

I know the profit margins are not as high on each device for samsung for say, but with this link its a proven fact that you can make up for that in less advertising. Apple has a nice product, I will not deny that. But you see what they are doing now, plastic iphones? cheaper models? They will squeeze every penny they can outta consumers. They have been selling the same iphone now for almost 7 years!! (aside from the exterior. Its like dog food. It never changes) IOS7 better change for the good or else more people will jump to android than ever before.
 
IOS7 better change for the good or else more people will jump to android than ever before.

Any sources for people jumping ship?

Because all those "Which phone would you buy next?" and "How happy are you with your device?" surveys are dominated by the iPhone.

The number of people switching from iOS to Android seems low.

Yes, maybe there are hundreds of thousands - but with a user base of 300 million people, even 2 million people switching to Android is unimportant.

And what about people buying their first iPhone?

Will they say that they are bored by iOS?

No, because they have never used it before and for them, it's brand new and not boring and stale.

The iPhones sales have grown exponential, which means two things: YoY the increase in sales has been enormous AND a huge percentage of iPhone users are still using their first iPhone.

For these users, who have been owning an iPhone for only a year, iOS is still very fresh.
 
Right now i own an android tablet and android os is very buggy and laggy. It crashes on me and the browser locks up some times i type and there is no words i have reboot.at least i wont have these troubles when i get my ipad.
 
Anytime you introduce new technology into the market of course people are going to go crazy over it.

Anytime? Tell that to Microsoft, Blackberry, all the TV set makers who pushed 3DTV a couple years ago, Clearwire, Apple/Intel with their Thunderbolt, Chevy w/ their Volt. I could sit here all day and come up with new tech that consumers resisted or were ambivalent towards.

So, no, I don't really see your point if it's that people bought the mini because it was new. It's wasn't new, it was and is a shrunken iPad 2. And as you maintain, overpriced at that. But there is a long history, even of Apple products (think original Apple TV most recently) of new products that people are not motivated to buy and gather dust on the store shelf until the fire sale. People bought the mini for a host of reasons, but not because it was novel. It was not and is not.
 
Thus the competition between Apple eco-system and Android eco-system is almost impossible, how could iOS combine all those Android UI into one?

The important thing to remember is that Apple has no competition. There is no tablet market; there is only an iPad market.:rolleyes:
 
A cheaper ipad with no camera would be great for schools and businesses.

Schools have to be really careful about cameras because innapropriate use. I can only imagine what would happen if a school gave a kid an ipad and they started taking innapropriate pictures of other students/themselves and possibly sending them to others. Let alone when the ipads are turned back in, handled by a teacher, etc. then it becomes a question on who took the pictures etc. Right now at the school my wife works at there are all kinds of issues with stuff like this. Teachers/administrators aren't allowed to touch/look at a students phone because it opens them and the school up to all kinds of trouble. If they have to take a phone away from a student they have to hold out a zip lock bag and have the student drop it in, and then the phone is kept in that bag until it is given back to the student, or looked at with parents/lawyers/police etc present.

Also, many businesses where people have confidential information around they don't allow cameras. People with cameras on their phones/ipads have to leave them in their locker/car when they get to work. An ipad without a camera would be able to be taken into work and used.
 
A cheaper ipad with no camera would be great for schools and businesses.

Apple don't do Cheaper. And when it does Cheaper is a brand new device that they can named as cheap. Power macintosh LC 500 series is an example. LC stands for LOW COST and I don't think This happens again
 
If it sells for $229 it will be Apple's best selling iPad. Sales of the full size will fall drastically, IMHO. People will buy because of price.

Not exactly. And not the reason I own one.

I now own one for the same reason of easier portability. I used to go everywhere with my laptop, then (full sized) iPad and then.....

Do you see the trend?
 
While there certainly are limits of what you can do with technology, these limits are only there, because products target a certain customer base at a price the customer is willing to pay. Tablets are going to be the future and while Apple may insist on their current very high profit margins, they cannot keep them that high across the board, because there will inherently be an increasing amount of offerings with sufficient performance and price for the masses. One thing you have to consider is that production costs are going down constantly and the iPad mini doesn't have anything that i would consider cutting edge in it already.

Apple doesn't want stagnating marketshare for one of their finest products. There's a solution for almost everything in this world apart from some serious illnesses or that we eventually have to die. You just have to be willing to make some compromises, like with the AppleTV, that is an incredibly good product for a very good price.

I'm not suggesting that anything in the Mini is cutting edge, but you can't make a product with the level of fit and finish that people expect from Apple at a price point a hell of a lot lower than that. Sure, there are Korean tablet makers shoving mediocre chips with middling performance into plastic cases with crummy looking screens and trying to sell them for $149.00 at a 2% profit margin, but none of those things are particularly relevant to Apple.
 
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