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Table market so large Apple should offer 3 versions.

PracticalMac said:
One size does not fit all. The world is full of S, M, L, XL, XXL, and XXXXXXXXL.
We expect size selection, its almost a right, why believe one size of iPad be accepted by everyone?

The demand for tablets has exploded and people are looking at what works for them best. Sure iPad is the by far the best, but that is not enough for people to buy it.

In 2010 one size was perfect, today it is a serious liability because it does not give customers choices.

Apple has several sizes of MacBook, MBAir's, iMac's
Offer 3 versions of iPod's.
And still produce 2 older generations of iPhones (3GS and 4).
iPad is only 1, with last years model.

Meanwhile most competition offers at least 2 versions, Samsung offering 4, maybe 5.

Apple needs:
9.8"
7.8"
and perhaps a
10.1" in 16:9 wide screen format, possibly same format as 2012 iPhone (5?) format.

You may not agree with the proposed sizes, but Apple does need to offer different versions.
(I want the XXXXXXXXXXL one ;) )
Click to expand...

I won't down rank you but I don't understand why a 9.8 ( currently a 9.7 ) then a 10.1 16x9. The 16x9 might seem good for movies but I spend much more time on my iPad reading books and websites and 16x9 is quite aweful at that, I've spent days on 16x9 android tablets.

Apple might venture into other sizes when they feel the time is right but they obviously felt 16x9 for movies was less useful to their customers for most tasks.

All the other tablet makers use 16x9 or close to it bc it means the manufacturers get a greater yield on the production line, therefore cheaper screens.

It's like most LCD manufacturers making monitors, if the width is set at 1920, you can make many more monitors if you set the height at 1080 vs 1200.

Why do you thing 1920x1200 monitors barely exist anymore? BC the production lines.


Aka the search for for cheap parts rather than focusing on user experience.
 
nuckinfutz said:
My choice:

  • 7.85 iPad Mini
  • 9.7 iPad
  • 11.6 iPad XL
Click to expand...

Why would you choose one over the other, with less than 2" difference in either direction. If your are smart as the manufacturer, you choose 1 and 3, or 2. Guess what Apple did? 2. It's a new market and the best way to enter /create it is with one simple product.

I'd rather have one good product at one size than the company wasting resourcing making 3 products.
 
spacepower7 said:
Why would you choose one over the other, with less than 2" difference in either direction. If your are smart as the manufacturer, you choose 1 and 3, or 2. Guess what Apple did? 2. It's a new market and the best way to enter /create it is with one simple product.

I'd rather have one good product at one size than the company wasting resourcing making 3 products.
Click to expand...

7.85 would be light. It would ideal for book reading and the easy "grab and go" iPad that sadly the 9.7 is just a wee bit too large for. It simply must be < 1lb. It would be an ideal education iPad and an iPad for vertical markets much like how Disney uses iPads to manage some aspects of their theme parks. It would also be the ideal "second screen" device for media applications for the Apple branded HDTV

9.7 would be your venerable tweener model. Light enough to carry around but large enough to be productive. Apple would feel less pressure to lessen the weight because of the iPad mini and that would allow for larger battery and beefier processing.

11.6 or 13.3" - would be the creative's iPad. It would be built more rugged. It would be portable but coming in at 2lbs makes it less portable than. It would be aimed at Pro users and Digital Artists. It would come with a display technology that offered far more accurate drawing with a Bluetooth 4.0 stylus. It would offer a magsafe adapter and the beefiest of processing and GPU SoCs. It's primary use would be on the desk but at 2lbs it would move around easily. It would be much thicker than the other iPads. This would be the ideal iPad to run iOS versions of FCPX, Aperture, Logic X and more.


The screen sizes are chosen because should Apple decide to use some of these panels in their Macs they'd be able to order in bulk. I'm not sure if it's feasible to order panels and retrofit them for touch and non-touch use.
 
PracticalMac said:
...
Mini iPad (2) will cost less to make simply becuase it is smaller.
...
Click to expand...

Wow. Here's a gaping hole in your argument. You want development money spent to fit the iPad 2's components into a smaller case, devise a higher energy density battery so thickness wouldn't need to go up dramatically but battery life could be maintained, and then charge less for it?

Really, the only component of the iPad 2 that you'd be shrinking is the display. Other than that, pretty much everything else has to get in there. That display has an estimated cost of less than $100, so how are you arguing that this smaller display would reduce cost enough to justify a $100 price point reduction? Bear in mind that where displays are concerned, while smaller size generally does equate to lower cost, higher pixel density generally equates to higher cost. So, your hypothetical 7" 1024x768 display could be cheap OR more expensive than the iPad 2's display.

A much safer bet would be that changing the size would have essentially no effect on the price point. Thus you'd have a $399 16 GB iPad Mini, and, perhaps a $499 32 GB iPad Mini.

Of course, this is all dangerous terminology to use, especially if there is an XL introduced. I can hear the jokes already. "It's the new Max-i-Pad!"

Not to mention the fact that this whole discussion, while interesting, at times, is rather moot, as Apple will introduce new sizes of iPads if and when it suits their calculus, not yours, mine, or anyone else's. As a case in point, I want them to add a 128 GB model. Flash prices have gone down more than enough since the first iPad was introduced to justify the memory increase without significant impact on the cost, but it hasn't happened . . . yet.
 
from iSuppli

2012-03-16_iPad.jpg


If these are correct the BOM price on the iPad 2 is already low $200s. I have my doubts though that any iPad mini would ship without Retina. I think Apple's going Retina for all new devices. It's vital to their strategy going forward.

If they decide to ship a standard display we're talking about smaller glass and less battery. In conjunction I'd expect the iPad mini to support the same Broadband/Baseband platform that the 6th generation iPhone is built upon.
 
While I dont agree with the op that they should flood the market with 15 different versions, I always wondered why so many object to a 7ish inch iPad? Its not like you have to buy it. I prefer the current size of the iPad but I really can't see what would be wrong to bring a smaller one to the market.
 
nuckinfutz said:
from iSuppli

2012-03-16_iPad.jpg


If these are correct the BOM price on the iPad 2 is already low $200s. I have my doubts though that any iPad mini would ship without Retina. I think Apple's going Retina for all new devices. It's vital to their strategy going forward.

If they decide to ship a standard display we're talking about smaller glass and less battery. In conjunction I'd expect the iPad mini to support the same Broadband/Baseband platform that the 6th generation iPhone is built upon.
Click to expand...

Made my point, twice over. Though I think you're overlooking something, when it comes to the question of the "retina-ness" of the display.

First off, if you consider iSuppli's cost estimate of the iPad 2 when it was first released:

2011-03-12_iPad2_BOM.png


You can see that the memory cost has dropped by about 1/3, from $65 to $47. This number, too, is down from around $80 in the original iPad (at release). So, if the flash price has dropped by so much, why haven't we seen increases in memory capacity at the same price point?

Now, those who a quick to compare may note that the total cost didn't drop much, if at all, because other components took up the slack, at least between the iPad 2 and the new iPad, including, but not limited to, the cost of the new retina display. Still, the point stands. Looking at the middle model (where we seem to have the best data for comparison), increasing the memory from 32 GB to 64 GB on the current generation move the price by a cost small amount.

I guess this analysis provides hope that, with the continuing reduction in cost of components over time and the relative stability of BOM cost at time of release, the next new iPad has a decent hope of finally having the doubling of storage.

Second, with the BOM prices you provided, you can see that the current iPad 2 has a screen and battery total price of about $120. There is simply no way that enough price reduction could be seen from shrinking these, if there is any cost reduction at all, such that a $100 price reduction could be justified.

Finally, with regard to the question of retina, let's consider the PPI of the various mobile retina devices:

iPhone/iPod : 3.5", 960x640, 326ppi
iPad : 9.7", 2048x1536, 264ppi

Now, if an iPad Mini had about a 6" screen with a resolution of 1024x768 (to avoid resolution fragmentation), then we'd have:

iPad Mini : 6", 1024x768, 213ppi

While this isn't as high of resolution as a "true" retina display, it would certainly have a dramatically crisper screen than the iPad 2, with it's 132ppi resolution.

Also, while Apple may be moving toward retina on everything, they are also clearly avoiding screen size fragmentation, so simply making the display 1536x1152 might give a "true" retina display, but it would break the universal screen size for iPads, i.e. even multiples of 1024x768.
 
The estimated cost of the iPhone 4S display/touchscreen is $37, so a 7-8" device will fall in somewhere between $37 and $97. Assuming a midpoint of $67, that's only a $30 savings over the current iPad. The battery could drop by about $5-7. So a $429-$449 price point is plausible. $299 is ridiculous and $399 would be tight.
 
Snowy_River said:
... how are you arguing that this smaller display would reduce cost enough to justify a $100 price point reduction?
Click to expand...

I never said Apple could make the Mini for $100 less.
In fact, I said Apple likely could not save $100 of the mfg of a Mini.
I also said Apple makes huge sums from sales of Apps, Music, Movies, and Books.

Snowy_River said:
Bear in mind that where displays are concerned, while smaller size generally does equate to lower cost, higher pixel density generally equates to higher cost.
Click to expand...

Moors law applies to pixels as well as processors. the DPI for a 1024x768 mini is far from cutting edge.

Snowy_River said:
Of course, this is all dangerous terminology to use, especially if there is an XL introduced. I can hear the jokes already. "It's the new Max-i-Pad!"
Click to expand...

LMAO! :D

Snowy_River said:
Not to mention the fact that this whole discussion, while interesting, at times, is rather moot, as Apple will introduce new sizes of iPads if and when it suits their calculus, not yours, mine, or anyone else's. As a case in point, I want them to add a 128 GB model. Flash prices have gone down more than enough since the first iPad was introduced to justify the memory increase without significant impact on the cost, but it hasn't happened . . . yet.
Click to expand...

So I patiently wait for the Mini and get to laugh at all the nay-sayers.
but it hasn't happened . . . yet. ;)

----------
spacepower7 said:
I won't down rank you but I don't understand why a 9.8 ( currently a 9.7 ) then a 10.1 16x9. The 16x9 might seem good for movies but I spend much more time on my iPad reading books and websites and 16x9 is quite aweful at that, I've spent days on 16x9 android tablets.

All the other tablet makers use 16x9 or close to it bc it means the manufacturers get a greater yield on the production line, therefore cheaper screens.
Click to expand...

A 16:9 was speculation that video/movie watchers would prefer that size for the 4:3, granted it does make book reading off some.

I did not spend too much time debating an ideal 3ed size is, just that market can accept even a 3ed size.

Never heard about wide screen being cheaper then 4:3.
 
Night Spring said:
Okay, Samsung offers more sizes, but the iPad is still selling more. How do you explain that?

Also, interestingly enough, Microsoft, who can't resist offering multiple versions of everything, announced two versions of their new Surface tablet, with different processor architecture and different versions of Windows OS, but they are both the same size.
Click to expand...


Apple was first with the iPad. When it came out, there were no other tablets. Apple gets all the press and their marketing budget is much larger than their competitors, so they spend more convincing the public that they want an iPad. Heck, I bought 2 of them but have since sold them both. The iPad gained popularity and whether it is better or not than the competing tablets at this time , it is just what people want. It is a trend. Sure it is a great product, but Apple is in favor now and until that changes, people will " just buy" the stuff that supposedly "just works."

I went to Best Buy last weekend and was amazed at the sheer number of tablets available. They were all grouped together. Some look cheap and some looked like premium products, but they were all grouped together and not one of them really stood out, yet Apple had it's own area for the iPad.
A few people were looking at the Android tablets, yet there were many more waiting to see the iPad.
Now that I use an Android phone and am familiar with ICS, I tried an ASUS Transformer tablet and was amazed at how fast it ran and how nice it was, yet the crowd was at the iPad table.
I am certain that every other electronics company out there is studying the Apple business model and is trying very hard to replicate it. It may happen eventually, but for now Apple has the "Mojo".
 
PracticalMac said:
I also said Apple makes huge sums from sales of Apps, Music, Movies, and Books.
Click to expand...

You keep pushing that as some kind of huge incentive, but that's Amazon's business model, not Apple's. Apple's iPad revenues last quarter were over $6 billion. Compare that to Apple's iTunes revenue for all of 2011, which was about $6 billion. That's for an entire year from all purchases on all devices (Apple TVs, computers, iPhones, iPods), not just iPads.

Amazon views every device sale as potential sales of content. Apple doesn't plan that way and they aren't about to reinvent themselves.

Come up with a projection that includes selling a 7" device that doesn't take away from current iPad sales AND allows for increasing quarterly revenues and then we'll listen.

This "it simply has to happen" approach is not very compelling.
 
Night Spring said:
Okay, Samsung offers more sizes, but the iPad is still selling more. How do you explain that?

Also, interestingly enough, Microsoft, who can't resist offering multiple versions of everything, announced two versions of their new Surface tablet, with different processor architecture and different versions of Windows OS, but they are both the same size.
Click to expand...


If Apple had more iPad sizes it is entirely possible that they would sell even more units correct? I guess as long as they do not, we won't know. Apple is all about profit margins, and I believe the margin would be far less on a smaller tablet, and they surely would not want someone to forgo buying a Standard size iPad because he or she wanted a 7 inch iPad mini.
They will absolutely make a smaller iPad if and when the masses start buying them from other manufacturers instead of buying an iPad from Apple.

I actually like the 7" tablets available now. Very easy to handle with 1 hand and much easier to take on the go. Lets see if the new Google 7 tablet is worthy of consideration.
 
Lindenhurst said:
The iPad gained popularity and whether it is better or not than the competing tablets at this time , it is just what people want. It is a trend. Sure it is a great product, but Apple is in favor now and until that changes, people will " just buy" the stuff that supposedly "just works."

...

for now Apple has the "Mojo".
Click to expand...

I can attest to that. My wife loves her iPhone. She uses it for phone calls and text messages only. I'm not even sure if she uses it for email which I set up for her. On her old Galaxy Q, she did use it for email because it had a physical keyboard. I put her music on her iPhone and she doesn't even listen to music on it. For music, she uses her near dead iPod which can't even last 2 hours. Her favourite feature on her iPhone is that she can switch cases. She bought 3 different cases for it.
 
Lindenhurst said:
If Apple had more iPad sizes it is entirely possible that they would sell even more units correct? I guess as long as they do not, we won't know. Apple is all about profit margins, and I believe the margin would be far less on a smaller tablet, and they surely would not want someone to forgo buying a Standard size iPad because he or she wanted a 7 inch iPad mini.
Click to expand...

Apple knows how many people want a smaller iPad and they also know the financial impact of releasing a smaller iPad. If their projections showed an increase in profitability for Apple with the introduction of a smaller device then we'd see it - and it may well occur at some future date. However, Apple has no desire to compete on a price point with $199 Kindle tablets or Google tablets. Neither Amazon nor Google base their profitability on hardware sales and can afford to "experiment." Apple doesn't have that luxury.
 
I disagree with your statement of the Touch no longer being important. Not everyone who wants a music and app player wants a 7" device; I would argue that having a media/app player which is pants pocket-able is important.

nuckinfutz said:
$299 may be ideal if this product every sees the light of day.
Click to expand...

The way I can see your 299 price working with the other devices is:

199 - Base iTouch-8GB
299 - Better iTouch-32GB, Base miniPad-8GB
399 - Best iTouch-64GB, Better miniPad-32GB, iPad 2-16GB
499 - Best miniPad-64GB, Base iPad 3-16GB
599 - Better iPad 3-32GB
699 - Best iPad 3-64GB

3G/GPS is just a $150 premium.
 
Last edited:
nuckinfutz said:
7.85 would be light. It would ideal for book reading and the easy "grab and go" iPad that sadly the 9.7 is just a wee bit too large for. It simply must be < 1lb. It would be an ideal education iPad and an iPad for vertical markets much like how Disney uses iPads to manage some aspects of their theme parks. It would also be the ideal "second screen" device for media applications for the Apple branded HDTV

9.7 would be your venerable tweener model. Light enough to carry around but large enough to be productive. Apple would feel less pressure to lessen the weight because of the iPad mini and that would allow for larger battery and beefier processing.

11.6 or 13.3" - would be the creative's iPad. It would be built more rugged. It would be portable but coming in at 2lbs makes it less portable than. It would be aimed at Pro users and Digital Artists. It would come with a display technology that offered far more accurate drawing with a Bluetooth 4.0 stylus. It would offer a magsafe adapter and the beefiest of processing and GPU SoCs. It's primary use would be on the desk but at 2lbs it would move around easily. It would be much thicker than the other iPads. This would be the ideal iPad to run iOS versions of FCPX, Aperture, Logic X and more.


The screen sizes are chosen because should Apple decide to use some of these panels in their Macs they'd be able to order in bulk. I'm not sure if it's feasible to order panels and retrofit them for touch and non-touch use.
Click to expand...

Wow

You've been on this site since 2002.

You should know that Apple does what they want, only releasing products when they think design, resources, and production are ready.

I do see a 7.x tablet in the future to compete with the Fire and Nexus 7, but I think Apple has known that all along. While wallstreet might think its reactionary ( the idiots who destroyed the global economy ) if you know Apple, they have been working on it since before the first iPad was released.

The bigger sizes you mention may come in a tablet/ultra book in the future, but several years away. Apple won't do it until they get it right, MS will do it anytime they can sell more windows and office licenses.

Do you think Apple engineers are sitting on their butts, not to be insulting but every spec and device was probably considered years ago. Apple will do the things that make sense at the time, they don't rush I to things to often.
 
Too many choices just lead to a mess like Samsung , and developers would have a very difficult time with all the ratio's. This is a major reason why androids market place or apps lack so badly.
 
darngooddesign said:
The way I can see your 299 price working with the other devices is:

199 - Base iTouch-8GB
299 - Better iTouch-32GB, Base miniPad-8GB
399 - Best iTouch-64GB, Better miniPad-32GB, iPad 2-16GB
499 - Best miniPad-64GB, Base iPad 3-16GB
599 - Better iPad 3-32GB
699 - Best iPad 3-64GB

3G/GPS is just a $150 premium.
Click to expand...

Nice price breakdown!
Although $130 for 4G & GPS

...
Although maybe Apple might bump base iPT and mini to 16gb?
Memory is getting pretty cheap...
 
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