Apple Open to iPad Price Cuts if Demand Lags?

[jmpage2]

Apple is losing sales right now because they do not have a product between the Touch/Macbook. It is extremely unlikely that they will loose more sales when they fill that gap.

Apple is losing sales because they don't have a netbook. They have made the debatable claim that the iPad is better than netbooks.

It is quite debatable considering the many many limitations on the iPad due to Apple's choice to run with the iPhone OS.

No printing? No multi-tasking? Sandboxed apps?

With a netbook I can pretty much do everything I can do with a PC. Some of it might be slow, but I can at least do it. A netbook running OS X is even more capable.

The iPad asks us to cut out a huge amount of the netbook experience in favor of multi touch and faster performance in the dedicated apps. The drawback is that you are extremely limited in what you can do with it. I couldn't even bang out a post this long with the device since the onscreen keyboard is a bit of a joke and I don't like the idea of having to slog a bluetooth keyboard or docking station along. What's the point of mobility if I can't type out a 200 word email in a reasonable amount of time?

This might cut it for casual home use where I want to surf or read a book, but I don't see myself taking this thing with me to do real work or do any kind of productivity.

I believe that Apple is going to start off simple and steadily build the iPad into an extremely viable product that will address many of the concerns that people have, I just don't see it happening for Gen 1.

 

[gnasher729]

After reading the article, I have the suspicion that Apple used the word "nimble" and the text in parentheses (Apple would be willing to reduce prices) is an explanation of the word that comes from the imagination of the writer alone.

 

[diabolic]

This might cut it for casual home use where I want to surf or read a book, but I don't see myself taking this thing with me to do real work or do any kind of productivity.

I know a lot of people that can't do real work on a netbook either. It's the casual users that are the target audience for the iPad. That potential market is exponentially larger than those wanting it to use it to do real work.

 

[jmpage2]

I know a lot of people that can't do real work on a netbook either. It's the casual users that are the target audience for the iPad. That potential market is exponentially larger than those wanting it to use it to do real work.

I agree with you that the iPad is squarely targeted at casual users who don't know what they are "missing" without a full computer.

Which exactly makes my point that a lot of iPads will never be slogged around in place of a full on laptop. If you want to do any kind of real "work" the iPad isn't going to cut it. No printing, no file sharing, etc.

I'm sure it will be fine for grandma to do some light web surfing and use a recipe app in the kitchen.

The disappointment is that many of us expected to be a bit underwhelmed with the iPad launch, we were just amazed at how underwhelming it really was.

My hope now is that Apple takes the feedback and delivers a much richer iPad 2.0 experience as well as some much needed hardware improvements. There's little excuse for not putting USB or a card reader on the thing let alone the camera/chat that this device should have had from the get go.

 

[txpece]

I want mine now.

Given that I don't own a computer, and have no desire to own a computer, this fits neatly between my work issued laptop and my iPhone. Something to surf the web on when I'm watching tv, respond to emails, read books, etc... For me the killer app was iWork, which makes it useful for work and home. I'll most likely preorder a 32GB as soon as I can. Go ahead, flame me...

 

[jmpage2]

Given that I don't own a computer, and have no desire to own a computer, this fits neatly between my work issued laptop and my iPhone. Something to surf the web on when I'm watching tv, respond to emails, read books, etc... For me the killer app was iWork, which makes it useful for work and home. I'll most likely preorder a 32GB as soon as I can. Go ahead, flame me...

I am considering ordering one myself. However, I need to see a few features show up in the software before I can commit to it.

I'm hoping iPhone OS 4.0 addresses some of this. Even the springboard looks pretty crummy, totally unable to take advantage of all that screen real estate. I'm still shocked that Apple has been working on this for so long and this is all they can ship out in time for 2010.

 

[Tulse]

No printing? No multi-tasking? Sandboxed apps?

I recall reading that Apple has said that there will be options for printing and a way for apps to access common file storage.

As for multi-tasking, I'm not sure that many people requesting this are clear as to what they want. Multi-tasking can be separated out into a couple of different uses: "the ability to run applications in the background that continually monitor and report to the user" (such as a Twitter or email app), and "the ability to quickly switch between different apps" (such as cutting and pasting between an email and a document). For the iPad, the former situation may be handled in many cased by push notifications, and the latter by improved application "persistence" (i.e., the app looks just like it did when you closed it last) and fast app launching.

I don't see myself taking this thing with me to do real work or do any kind of productivity.

If you have heavy productivity needs, this is not the device for you -- you need a laptop. But if you need to answer emails, or edit a presentation or document, then it seems very capable.

 

[deconstruct60]

.
3. Probably well less than 1/2 of the iPads sold will be 3G (my guess).

...with the occasional foray to the local Starbucks or library (which have wifi access anyways, so again, who needs 3G?).

Sure point 3 is true. Primarily because because the ones without 3G are more affordable. Lower cost things sell better. Econ 101.

As you latter comment points out, can get mobile access in many (but not all ) places have WiFi. If need "everywhere" coverage then 3G is more of a necessary option. However, WiFi doesn't primarily exist only in your house. That's a rather myopic view of WiFi.

but without an SD card slot reader so I can easily offload my photos to it (without a dongle), no flash, no video chat, etc, I see limited use for it on family holidays.

The dongle wieghs about as much as a tube of toothpaste. I rarely hear of folks who are so wieghed down with their vacation baggage that they can't take along a tube of toothpase. If have a decently large SDHC card and don't shoot like a paparazzi with a heavy trigger finger then can last all day with a single card. Can wait till get back to the room to unload your card ( and popping it out and doing the transfer saves battery life on your camera) . So you will use the dongle about as often as a tube of toothpaste too.

Meanwhile can set up the iPad as a "pass around" picture frame so folks can see the pictures took... as oppose to squinting at the camera's screen or another heavier laptop (if use Apple solution for that too. ). Toe to toe with the lowest cost possible netbook... screen to screen is that really going to match up to an IPS screen?

 

[wizard]

They very much need to get away from their image of the iPad.

I think there will be a lot of people that aren't trying to put tons of content on their iPads. I can think of several that I know that are planning to use it as mostly a wifi email/browser, and that's really all. The base model will be more than enough for them.

I don't doubt that one bit, as I had similar intentions when i got my IPhone. Now I use it more than my laptop. The value of the apps have made themselves known and thus it would be hard to resit them on the tablet. Simple things like dictionaries are very useful on these devices. Like wise with a number of other apps. All I'm saying is that best intentions sometimes hit reality front and center. Thus many people will go into the purchase with the thoughts you describe. The realization that hey this is also a nice computer will cause a lot of that space to be used.

I don't think Apple is expecting people to carry their entire iTunes library (or even a large chunk of it) around with them on an iPad.

I'm not either as I can't do that even on my laptop without an extra disk drive just for the library. All I'm saying is that there won't be enough room even for a partial transfer.

They still expect you to constantly sync with a main computer. I wish they'd get away from that though.

You are not the only one. It is not an issue of sync so much as the idea that we can all get buy with limited flash. In any event the iPad needs to have enough flash to take the average users music collection and selected apps and still have room for video and other data.

Like it or not I think most users will find 16GB to be to constraining especially once they get the taste of a few apps on their tongue. Especially apps experienced on the larger screen.


Dave

 

[wjdennen]

isn't it a little weird that it's not possible to pre-order the iPad?

 

[SBlue1]

I find it odd that everyone is shocked at how cheap the thing is compared to their expectations (there was even an audible collective gasp from the audience during the keynote!) and at the same time everyone is complaining about how expensive the thing is.

I expected a REAL computer for 1000 bucks. But when I saw this "iPod Touch Max" I thought that 500 bucks was waaaay to much, considering just 16 gig of storage and no real OS. Its just a toy. It's a sexy toy, but let us be honest, this is a luxery toy and not a computer.

 

[Speedy2]

Maybe you can explain to me how mom+dad+thekids are going to share this device?

How are they going to manage their different web bookmarks, email accounts and app preferences on a device that has a common interface and no user accounts?

User accounts are very useful, but not that many use them at home. People are extremely ok with sharing the web bookmarks and having their emails in Googlemail and not even using the Mail App.
I'm not saying that this is the right thing for everyone, I just say that you are bringing up a problem that many people have never heard of. Especially in the mom+dad target group.

 

[Speedy2]

Right until Mom & Dad visits some of their favorite web pages, and calls their geek son or daughter to explain to them why there are little blue boxes on their new shiny iPad, while the same page showed up fine on their old and cranky Windows XP desktop.

What has that got to do with the question, at which target group the iPad is aimed? The "Flash problem" will bother anyone who expects / needs / wants Flash, and that surely isn't a thing that Mom+Dad will care about.

My guess: many of the bigger websites will offer alternative, Flash-free versions of their content.

 

[deconstruct60]

Apple is losing sales because they don't have a netbook. They have made the debatable claim that the iPad is better than netbooks.

It is quite debatable considering the many many limitations on the iPad due to Apple's choice to run with the iPhone OS.

1. Apple doesn't have to stop all of those losses. Just some significant fraction of them to make more money. Are netbooks going to die off a couple months after iPad hits the market? Absolutely not. Not any more than RIM croaked and died months after the iPhone came out.

2. Running the iPhone OS is useful to Apple in three ways:

i. Most likely the iPhone is a spin off core research for this project. Not the other way around. The iPhone and Touch just got to market first. That doesn't diminish that iPad is meeting the objectives targeted from much earlier.
Went smaller screen and more afforable to get the two product lines launched, but this is a natural progression. [ Only the folks fixated on "I want cheaper laptop form factor" seem to have problems with seeing that. ]


ii. Since the physical similarity is much closer to the laptops running a different OS gives them better control on market segmentation. Sure there will be some cannibalization of laptops, but it won't be wholesale and out of control.

iii. The form factor isn't what the primarily targeted user need is. It is what they want to do rather than specific hardware that is paramount.

No printing?

If eBooks are the future why is killing trees with your Pages content aligned with that? In the use case of someone mailing/ftp/net disk share Doc and you need to view and perhaps send back tweaked subsections.... where is the inherent need to print?


Like Apple has no network printing abilities. Nice feature, yes. Core show stopper? No.

No multi-tasking?

It does do multi-tasking. What it doesn't do is multi-task apps from random folks. Several of Apple's app multitask just fine.

Sandboxed apps?

Cause crappy security approaches like ActiveX brought so much security to the internet. Or apps blowing away the computer. Isn't that what Windows/MacOS have been adding for the last decade or so?

With a netbook I can pretty much do everything I can do with a PC.

That is because the major design premise is that it should be shrunken PC.
If that is all you want that is suffice.

The question that Apple is brining to the table is whether that constraint (has to have all 90's PC properties really a good or necessary constraint.

The drawback is that you are extremely limited in what you can do with it. I couldn't even bang out a post this long with the device since the onscreen keyboard is a bit of a joke

It is only a drawback if you want/need something outside the usage box. If 95% of your usage is inside the usage box then it is an acceptable solution. The iPad doesn't have to solve everyones problems. Just enough folks to make a profit from.

As far as the keyboard goes. Know lots of folks whole type by henpecking at a keyboard with two index fingers. Most likely most folks "type" that way. The narrow range of folks who are either game controller-esque thumb trained or ten finger touch typists of large are not the mainstream.

I don't see myself taking this thing with me to do real work or do any kind of productivity.

When did Apple protray this as a primary content creation device.
For sure there is a subclass of netbook folks who really can't afford more than one computer and use it as their primary. However, there is a significant fraction of the netbook market where the device is a secondary (more consumption focused ) device.

I believe that Apple is going to start off simple and steadily build the iPad into an extremely viable product that will address many of the concerns that people have, I just don't see it happening for Gen 1.

Correct. So they will incrementally close the door on what netbooks differentiating factors are. However, I don't think they are going to try to completely close it. At some point you start to drag in legacy PC baggage and that will actually negate the effect trying to drive toward.

iPad will always likely try to balance between an extremely stable, extremely lightweight, focused "appliance" platform and being the anything goes more classic Windows/Mac OS X platform. What most folks need the vast majority of the time is the latter not the former.

 

[Ultranote]

we were just amazed at how underwhelming it really was.

My hope now is that Apple takes the feedback and delivers a much richer iPad 2.0 experience as well as some much needed hardware improvements. There's little excuse for not putting USB or a card reader on the thing let alone the camera/chat that this device should have had from the get go.

Here's a 10" multitouch computer that has a 10h battery/1 month standby, an instant-on OS, intuitive touch-oriented soft and optional 3G, starting at $499 and it's underwhelming because of what exactly? It's not a digital picture frame or a PMP with a built-in card reader. You can get those for $69 right now.
This thing is all about the software and connectivity. You can still get the USB dongle/card reader if really needed. I think power users are missing the point about what to do with it. Or maybe have never used touchscreen PC's before and don't want to know what can't work.

Casual users will be a target but also many niche markets users. It can be a chance for those who are required to be always connected via 3G to carry something less clumsy than a notebook & with a better used real estate than a netbook. Maybe reliable enough to leave the power supply at home. Equipped with enough equivalents to mainstream apps to leave the notebook at the office. Remote administration via iPhone or iPad native versions of logmein, iSSH, VNC, Citrix is one such scenario.
The main thing is to get enough iPad-native rich softwares to kickstart the platform.

 

[deconstruct60]

isn't it a little weird that it's not possible to pre-order the iPad?

Absolutely not.

Apple can't bill you until they are about ready to ship. Between now and then you could be laid off or decide not to buy or credit card get repaced or .... they have to keep all of that stuff.

Why do they want to keep all of that in their system... where they have to back it and safely store it for zero compensation.

The fanatics you have to get the order in during the first 3 hours available are still going to be able to do that later.

The vast majority of folks aren't going to buy this until they handle one. Yeah there are not so small number of zealots who will buy it sight unseen, but the bulk of the people are going to want to handle it and play with one before buying it.


If you are thinking they want to judge interest. They have a website. Just take down hits on keynote presentation and details and watch how that shrinks/increases over time. There are lots of ways of doing that besides taking people's credit card numbers.

 

[Speedy2]

They can't. Dell sells 3G cards for $125 because the GSM patent fees alone total nearly a hundred bucks.

You can buy 3G USB sticks in Europe for as cheap as 40-50 Euro. No contract, no questions asked. It is pretty obvious, that a lot of those extra 130 bucks go directly into Apple's pockets as profit. Same as the extra you pay for the additional storage space. 16 GB of flash memory are about $30 when you can trust those sources who tried to find out the value of the iPad parts.

 

[macnchiefs]

They better be flexible in pricing since it isn't flexible in functionality.

 

[Ultranote]

You can buy 3G USB sticks in Europe for as cheap as 40-50 Euro.

In many cases these sticks are sold through mobile operators and they're transparently subsidised by the operators, even for pre-paid 3G.

 

[AbblePC]

Stupid statement to make......basically "If we don't sell what we expect i will lower the price". Hows that gonna help.

Reminded me of when I had Vonage for $30 a month, when I went to cancel they offered $15 a month to stay, really pissed me off. Why wasn't it $15 in the first place.

lol I recently did the same after using their service for two years on a line I wasn't even making use of. I know stupid on my part but I couldn't let it go just in case. But after two years of strictly using cell phones I figured I would cancel.
As soon as I mentioned it on the phone with Vonage, I was offered $.9.95/m
and I went with it only for a month or two to make sure any one that had that old land line number would know of my cell #.

 

[NT1440]

<snip>

Just so you know, the reason why they can't do pre orders right now is because it hasn't been cleared through the FCC thus making it illegal to do so.

 

[jmull]

Hardware, Too Little

The software is silly, but the hardware is just ridiculous. Why did they even bother creating this thing? Was Steve determined just to release a tablet, any tablet, before he kicks the bucket? Sure, ok it's pretty, and A4 IS something new, but they are charging double price.

 

[Speedy2]

Analysts agree that the actual manufacturing cost of the basic iPad is below $300. Of course, there are overheads, just as development, logistics, marketing and all the usual costs, but it is also true that Apple and similar companies have very good deals on parts. In many occasions, they even order more parts just to secure manufacturing capacity and supply (and to hurt their competitors with shortage of certain parts).

I don't really see what you're getting at. _Every single_ hardware company needs a gross margin above 30%, otherwise it'll go out of business or be confined to selling commodity products very soon.
I don't know the exact numbers, but Apple's gross margin isn't much better than, say, Intel's, maybe even lower. I'm VERY confident that every single Android phone or Zune out there is sold with a similar margin as the iPhone.

The estimated $270 cost for the iPad parts OF COURSE includes the discounts that Apple gets. It is known how much manufacturing flash memory and touchscreen costs, and no one's gonna sell Apple a few million memory chips and GPS chips at a loss, right? (Please do us the favour and don't claim someone will, because it'd be ludicrous) The iPad is sold with very similar margins as the other Apple products, and is no way more "overpriced" that any iPod Nano or 13" Macbook Pro.

It's funny that you'd call e.g. software developmen an "overhead". Have you got ANY idea how much development of a complex piece of software costs? Microsoft stated that the development of Vista cost more than the moon landing. Of course, that's hyperbole and the numbers aren't comparable, but it gives a rough idea that it's definitely not just something you could brush off as overhead. I'm pretty sure, a hell lot of money was invested into iPhone/iPad OS.

 

[deconstruct60]

I agree with you that the iPad is squarely targeted at casual users who don't know what they are "missing" without a full computer.

There are lots of folks who are using increasingly grossly over resource allocated laptops. The reason they don't know they are "missing" the full capabilites of the "full" computer is because they don't use (or need) them.
Certainly there are people that do, but there are also people that don't.
The misallocation results because everybody is suppose to fit in one "box".

Which exactly makes my point that a lot of iPads will never be slogged around in place of a full on laptop.

Like there weren't folks who sold/got rid of/traded off their MBP for a MacBook Air when they came out. Most often on a trade up in expensive. This is a trade down in expense. Numerous slots and whatnot disappeared and folks bought it anyway.

The disappointment is that many of us expected to be a bit underwhelmed with the iPad launch, we were just amazed at how underwhelming it really was.

Because there were tons of folks in denial. Still are.

There's little excuse for not putting USB or a card reader on the thing let alone the camera/chat that this device should have had from the get go.

USB or card reader are likely going to make the device thicker. Whether like it or not, that is an objective with the device. The other primary objective is that the device is to be held in the primary usage. (which makes stuff hanging out of it not a priority. )

iChat is going to explode if only had this device. Not seeing it. Will techy folks use it? Sure. Will generic grandma start using it? Probably not.

Just so you know, the reason why they can't do pre orders right now is because it hasn't been cleared through the FCC thus making it illegal to do so.

The iPad WiFi version is very likely using the exact same radio module from the Touch. (with N wireless option turned on. LOL. ).
Perhaps the antenna config is somewhat different, but this isn't exactly new. perhaps contributes a bit but not sure that is the major blocker on the WiFi front.

Frankly, the software isn't done either. Numerous comments when engaget/etc. when got to hands-on portion of the keynote that there were glitches and non-implement features in iBooks , etc. present on the units.

 

[HLdan]

There are some major missing features that would make it the "best" browsing and sharing experience.

I was hoping that i can use this thing to share my keynote with other, so I was hoping for a way to connect it to an external monitor, "to share pictures and videos, etc...

And why can't you do any of this with the iPad? Are you just ranting to stay in the crowd of complainers? You can easily connect the iPad to a projector via VGA, you can hook it up to your TV with an Apple Composite A/V cable. You can also buy the SD card adaptor to upload or get photo's off the iPad. But you must've forgotten to check this out before your rant.