I'm sure you feel the same way every time you fill your gas tank. Or pay your electric bill. Or cable bill. Or grocery bill.
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Phil Schiller Defends iPad Mini Pricing Decision
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I'm sure you feel the same way every time you fill your gas tank. Or pay your electric bill. Or cable bill. Or grocery bill.
Only one catch.
Apple did release it's budget market tablet computer first. The iPod Touch.
It's only marketed as iPod. When really it's just as much as a computer as the iPhone and iPad is.
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Yes. The first iPhone.
I don't get all the faux outrage. Sure, $299 would have been a better price point psychologically. But is Apple really expected to compete on price ($199) with companies who sell their plastic wonders at cost in order to sell you books or sell you to advertisers? Who cares about market share when you aren't making money? Ask Dell how well that approach works.
Remember the Nintendo DS Lite? A huge seller at $129. Tiny screen but good price, right? Now add some games at $30 a pop. You're at $329 in no time. Believe me, I know. My kids have 3 of them.
I can get quality games on iOS for $.99. And the best part of all? That game goes to every single iOS device in my house. My kids can all play a game simultaneously for a dollar. That could be $90 on the Nintendo side of the coin.
It's a no-brainer. These will sell like crazy for Christmas for people like me who are sick of fighting over their iPad with the kids but weren't willing to drop $500 to get them each one of their own.
Geez, you can drop $150 bucks on a LEGO set these days.
Remember the Nintendo DS Lite? A huge seller at $129. Tiny screen but good price, right? Now add some games at $30 a pop. You're at $329 in no time. Believe me, I know. My kids have 3 of them.
I can get quality games on iOS for $.99. And the best part of all? That game goes to every single iOS device in my house. My kids can all play a game simultaneously for a dollar. That could be $90 on the Nintendo side of the coin.
It's a no-brainer. These will sell like crazy for Christmas for people like me who are sick of fighting over their iPad with the kids but weren't willing to drop $500 to get them each one of their own.
Geez, you can drop $150 bucks on a LEGO set these days.
Oh my gosh, did your iPad 3 just magically stop working yesterday? If it did you should send it in for repair...
IF Apple made this as a response to those products they would have set the price much much lower, even taking a major hit on it, just to blast them away in a price war.
Instead they stuck with their typical 'overpriced' games which might work because hey consumers are sheep and all that, or might fail epically
I know I'm about 16 pages late to the party, and someone may have brought it up already, but you have to compare it apples to apples (no pun intended). The "4 inch tablet" base model is 32gb for $299. The 7.9 inch tablet, 32gb version, is $429. It's not a $30 price difference between them when you compare equal capacity models.
If Apple offered a 16gb ipod touch, it'd probably be priced at $199. $130 less than the 16gb iPad mini.
I'm not sure if these comments are serious, or just some trolls posting all kind of ********, but EVERY spec in the iPad mini is far superior to the Kindle HD or any other product in that category.
There's a reason Apple is so far ahead in sales. it is the same reason they were so far ahead with the iPod. Every company tried to come out with a crappy knock-off (Dell DJ anyone?) thinking all they had to do was to undercut the iPod and people would flock to it like they had done for Windows.
It no longer work that way.
People are now much more knowledgable about technology than they were in the 80's. There is also now the possibility of testing these products in person in Apple stores or any other point of sale. Hold an iPad, then hold ANY other plastic piece of garbage. It does not even compare.
When the HP one went on liquidation at 99$, my boss drove me to our nearest Best buy to get one. OMG, after 15 minutes of playing with it we just left. The screen was godawful, small text was hard to read, the operating system was crap, the gyros would turn the screen vertical or horizontal at the slightest little twitch of the device...
Fanboys are ridiculous, MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of people worldwide are not. If those android et all ****wares were better, they would sell better. The reality is that they are vastly inferior, in every way. You may not like the price, but the truth is better software and better hardware cost. You might be kids who never operated a business, but every option you offer you charge extra. That's the way it works. If you can't pay for it, just don't buy it and move on.
i don't see that much as a premium on the iPads.
Apple still prices them competitively compared to other competitors. Most others can't match the hardware which is usually priced significantly more then the iPad.
So they have to go on the low end and also find other ways to make money. Like primarily making money off of services rather then hardware like Amazon Kindle fire does. While breaking even or selling the tablets at a loss.
Apple is still providing a better priced quality tablets to the consumer, it still makes bigger profits then most.
The difference here is that an iPad is a completely non-essential item. If you don't like the price, you can completely avoid purchasing it. This is not the case with the items you mentioned.
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You're paying for something that's worth the asking price, what more can you ask for? It's a premium product, not some run-of-the-mill tablet.
Oh my gosh, did your iPad 3 just magically stop working yesterday? If it did you should send it in for repair...
He can't. Despite the fact that it would be against a myriad of state and federal laws, his warranty magically stopped working as well
I wouldn't. I owned a Nexus 7 for a couple of days, and whilst its size is quite convenient, I found web browsing and reading on it, to blow. The iPad user experience is substantially better, retina display or not.
If that's the case then Apple are just selling it at what you'd expect a co to sell a product for. Cost + some profit!
That's the issue. Some folks are saying it's not worth the asking price and that price should be lower.
I say if you feel that way, don't buy it. But it's my money and my right to make that call for myself so **** about how I should spend my money. If I want to 'waste' it on an iPad etc that's my business.
exactly. what seems silly is Phil trying to defend the pricing decision in public. who exactly is he talking to? macrumors regulars? the market will decide if the price is too high or not. If the ipad mini sales are slow and they have to lower the price in the future he'll look twice as silly for opening his mouth in the first place.
I know I'm in a minority (heck - I still have/love my iPad 1st generation and haven't seen any real need to upgrade yet) - but for me it's about what the device can do for me/what I can do with it more than whether it's a premium product based on design/specs.
Maybe I am the only "old" guy here (my first computer was an Apple IIe), but I have heard all this same crap year after year. "If only Apple would drop their prices they could have more market share." Apple hasn't cared about market share, and even today only brags about it when it happens by accident. Apple cares about profitability. Even with the iPhone, Apple could drop prices and sell more, but that's not the game they are playing, no matter how many years people complain about how Apple operates.
Here's a clue, Apple is the most successful company in the world. They don't need forum posters to tell them how to do their business. They are doing just fine. And how stupid does someone have to be to go on-line and predict the failure of an Apple product? Yes, Apple has not been perfect, but it's been a long time since they really screwed up. And all you have to do is look back at every product launched in the past five years to see all kinds of people who predicted that a new product was going to fail. I'm sorry, but the iPad mini, (which I will not be buying) is going to sell like crazy, regardless of what all these arm-chair CEOs are predicting.
Here's a clue, Apple is the most successful company in the world. They don't need forum posters to tell them how to do their business. They are doing just fine. And how stupid does someone have to be to go on-line and predict the failure of an Apple product? Yes, Apple has not been perfect, but it's been a long time since they really screwed up. And all you have to do is look back at every product launched in the past five years to see all kinds of people who predicted that a new product was going to fail. I'm sorry, but the iPad mini, (which I will not be buying) is going to sell like crazy, regardless of what all these arm-chair CEOs are predicting.
Could we ask what that cost value is? Anyone know?
Then we'll know if the price is fair or not.
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No, it doesn't. The iPad mini starts at 1449 zloty incl. 23% VAT = 447 USD.
The price excl. VAT is 1178 zloty = 367 USD.
Here in Sweden we have 25% VAT, and here the iPad mini starts at 2995 SEK incl. VAT (447 USD) = 2396 SEK excl. VAT (357 USD).
So the difference between US/Poland is actually $38... not $171.
Those $38 are "we hate foreigners"-tax, that's normal and not unique to Apple.
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Safari is better than the Nexus 7's Chrome, true. I won't argue with that.
This is negated for me by the fact that I rarely need to actually use the browser anyway. Most news companies have apps, as do tech blogs like The Verge. Reader HD is a good Reeder substitute for RSS feeds. Tapatalk works for all the forums I go to now. Instapaper and Pocket are both great (and easy to send to via the share button), as is Flipboard.
Add to the fact that no retina will detract from the better web surfing experience on the Mini, and you can see why it's not such a major plus for me.
This is negated for me by the fact that I rarely need to actually use the browser anyway. Most news companies have apps, as do tech blogs like The Verge. Reader HD is a good Reeder substitute for RSS feeds. Tapatalk works for all the forums I go to now. Instapaper and Pocket are both great (and easy to send to via the share button), as is Flipboard.
Add to the fact that no retina will detract from the better web surfing experience on the Mini, and you can see why it's not such a major plus for me.
Feels like a rushed product. Apple is upgrading to retina screens and then they go backwards with the iPad Mini.
I think a retina version with the A6 chip will come out in 6 months, then I'll consider it. But as of right now, $329 is too much for a shrunken iPad 2.
I think a retina version with the A6 chip will come out in 6 months, then I'll consider it. But as of right now, $329 is too much for a shrunken iPad 2.
It may take them a while, but consumers will always eventually figure out the best products in a given category.
Once you listen to what your friends own, read some reviews and check out
products in a store you kind of know.
This is not going to be any different.
I'd rather pay more for something that works great (Don't care about what is inside) and works for me.
Not trying to tell others on budgets what to do, but this seems to be a good product, depending on what you want to do with it.
Since I have an iPad3 I am biased, but the lighter weight of a mini may make me switch. The missing 1.85 display inches isn't a big enough difference to worry about.
Does not matter how ahead Android may be, if the majority of Android devices are several generations behind. Some of which can't be updated.
But regardless, I don't think Android is necessarily that far ahead, its just that Apple is focused in a different direction.
i think the decision not to use the retina display was to price it within reach of the lower priced Android tablets. For a little more you can get an iPad Mini type of thing.
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