I was just reading some tech news when I stumbled upon this. It's funny, but I have a tablet that was $150 cheaper sitting on the coffee table....I had to post the article because I can't post links yet. From the New York Times:
So Far Rivals Can’t Beat iPad’s Price
By JENNA WORTHAM
The iPad 2, unveiled on Wednesday, offers several sleek improvements over its predecessor. But its most attractive feature is perhaps the same one its predecessor had: the price tag.
And what makes that feature even more compelling is that so far, Apple’s competitors in tablets cannot beat or even match it.
The iPad 2, like the original, starts at $499. Apple says that since it introduced the original last April, it has sold 15 million of the devices, generating $9.5 billion in revenue. Analysts say this is only the start of a lucrative market for tablet computers, which could soar as high as $35 billion by 2012.
The Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab were introduced recently, both to generally good reviews but at higher prices. Dozens of hardware manufacturers are scrambling to bring their own variations to market this year: Hewlett-Packard with the TouchPad, HTC with the Flyer, LG with the G-Slate and BlackBerry with the PlayBook.
But prices, or even release dates, have not been announced, and industry experts say it is not yet clear whether the devices can be competitive with Apple on price.
“There have been nearly a hundred competitive tablets that have been introduced since the iPad,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “But it seems that no one has eclipsed or even matched Apple on pricing.”
Analysts and industry experts point to a number of reasons. Primarily, they say, Apple’s deep pockets — a staggering $60 billion in cash reserves — have allowed it to form strategic partnerships with other companies to buy large supplies of components, for example, expensive flash memory. By doing this, the company probably secures a lower price from suppliers, ensuring a lower manufacturing cost.
At the same time, they say, Apple has sidestepped high licensing fees for other items it needs, like the A4 and A5 processors within the iPads. Those parts, designed in-house at Apple by a company that Apple bought, are among the costlier components needed to make a tablet computer.
Mr. Sacconaghi said Apple also could subsidize some of the cost of building iPads with the money it makes through its App Store, which generates more than a billion dollars each year. This means that Apple can take a lower profit margin on the iPad, 25 percent, than it does on, for example, the iPhone, which can yield as much as 50 percent profit.
Yet another advantage is Apple’s wide net of its own global retail shops and online stores; for customers, this means they can avoid a markup from a third party like Best Buy.
Although other companies have some of these factors in their favor, no one but Apple has all of them.
Steven P. Jobs, chief executive of Apple, who took the stage during the Apple press event Wednesday in San Francisco to announce the iPad 2, made a not-so-discreet swipe at rivals.
Is 2011, he asked, “going to be the year of the copycats?”
“Most of these tablets are not even catching up to our first iPad,” he said.
For example, like Apple, Samsung cuts costs for making its Galaxy Tab, a seven-inch tablet, because it builds many of the components itself. And like many other tablet makers, Samsung relies on the Android mobile operating system, which Google makes available free. Even so, the Galaxy can cost as much as $549 without a contract for cellular service.
“Just because a company sources internally doesn’t ensure that they get the best pricing on components,” said Rhoda Alexander, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, a research firm. “It doesn’t necessarily guarantee efficiency from a cost perspective.”
Justin Denison, vice president for strategy at Samsung, said that in the United States, the company relegates device pricing to its carrier partners, but that he was not worried that the cost of the Galaxy, which has received generally glowing reviews, might turn prospective buyers away.
He said the company was “quite happy” with early sales of the device, which it pegs at two million, adding that “consumers will decide for themselves whether the price is worth it.”
But adding to the challenge for Samsung and most other tablet makers is that they rely on third parties like Best Buy to sell the devices. Apple’s retail and online stores help eliminate this problem.
“You don’t see a markup in the same way a retailer would mark up an item, so it reduces that particular margin,” said Shane Greenstein, a professor at Northwestern University’s graduate business school.
Shelling out billions of dollars to build glossy retail stores or to make investments in chip processors is not an option for a smaller company like Motorola, which recently spun its mobile devices business into its own independent sector. Motorola’s Xoom, a tablet with a 10-inch screen, a dual processor and front- and rear-facing cameras, costs $800 in the United States without a two-year contract with a wireless carrier. That’s roughly $70 more than the equivalent 32-gigabyte iPad 2 outfitted with both Wi-Fi and 3G functions.
Alain Mutricy, a senior vice president for mobile devices at Motorola, defended the pricing of the Xoom, pointing to the tablet’s extensive memory, high-resolution display and compatibility with Verizon’s 4G LTE network, to which Xoom owners will be able to upgrade free, as justification for the price tag.
“The Xoom is priced exactly where it has to be,” he said.
Mr. Mutricy said he did not think the company would do anything differently to trim costs.
“It’s not that we are trying to lower the price and cannot,” he said. “We are pricing the Xoom based on what we are offering consumers.”
But he said that Motorola was planning to expand its line of tablets in the future that would most likely include smaller, lightweight options with a lower retail cost.
Huawei, a Chinese hardware manufacturer, has said it hopes to press into the United States market later this year with the S7 Slim, a svelte, rectangular machine running Android on a 7-inch display and a 1-gigahertz processor, for $300.
Ross Gan, the worldwide head of corporate communications at Huawei, said the company cut costs by using a modest marketing campaign.
“We didn’t set our margins based on massive advertising campaigns,” he said in a recent interview.
Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst with Forrester Research, predicted that pricing would become increasingly important in the tablet market because as more options appeared — particularly cheaper, no-name Android-powered tablets — shoppers would want to pay less.
“Consumers expect that over time, electronics get cheaper,” she said. “They’re seeing all these other devices in the market and not necessarily distinguishing between processor speeds. There’s a huge variation in price and power but from a distance, they all look like 7-inch touch screens.”
Over time, analysts say, efficiency in production will help bring down costs for competitors.
But the market will be hypercompetitive until then, said Ms. Alexander of IHS iSuppli.
“The iPad may continue to own the market if competitors don’t get more realistic on their pricing,” she said. “Right now, it’s too high relative to what the iPad has for the product.”
Well, Apple has been full of **** alot lately. Always expect this nonsense to spew out their mouths now.
Wow! Was this Guy working for apple or just hoping to get a kickback for sucking apples dong. I thought the newyork times would have better research than that. What about the vpad7 for 300$ or the zpad / Gtab for under 400$? I could write a more comprehensive and less biased article than this joker even if I was writing it while I was drunk and angry.
I am not sure of the reason, but the gtab has really never recieved any press love. Agreed out of the box the device leaves much to be desired, and that is what tech journalist really review, but for a device that specs wise (minus the screen) can match the Xoom, you would expect atleast a little buzz.
Odd, but I'm not complaining as it has kept the price low.
Not surprising really, they were the first to open the tablet market this time round, and it has really opened this time, so it stands to reason they will be struggling with the large amount of competition that has followed them, I'm not a Apple fan, never was, but i do realize they opened the market, and business competition can get a bit underhanded
same article was on cnn...be its being used as a written ad. I just can't pay $500 and not have flash or sd/usb storage...they are dribbling out the improvements and the idiots line up... They are predicting huge lines when 2 comes out! for what? faster and thinner ...big deal.
Hopefully one day the ipad will be fast enough to run flash
P00r said:
Hopefully one day the ipad will be fast enough to run flash
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HA
Dictator Jobs would never allow it
Years ago I got in on the ground floor buying the Amiga 1000 computer. Everyone who had one or saw it were impressed. A great community of people supported each other, giving heads up on new hardware and software releases. Promoting the hell out of it.
It finally died, and was regarded as a good game machine and maybe some graphics. Most just didn't take notice.
Did I do it again buying the Gtab?
Related
I was checking up on GSMArena and found this article and almost had an heart attack when I saw the title. It's interesting how much hell the iPhone has caused WinMo. Now I hope more than ever that MS gets things done with WinMo7. Read on fellow WinMo lovers and US AT&T customers!
only really an issue for people who buy phones over contract though
but it bodes unwell for wm
guess they should saddle up with wm7 and windows7 too as it seems
companys dont feel vista offer them anything xp dident well not enough to
change anyway
Damn, I hope that doesn't happen.
If they actually drop windows mobile they will loose a lot of device diversity and thus loose out on lots of potential customers, regular and businesses alike. windows mobile is a staple in the business arena along side the blackberry and for them to stop supplying windows mobile devices they would be kissing all those profits goodbye. phone companies don't make money on the devices (they actually loose money on them), but they make money on the contracts, especially 2year contracts:
**the average american spends $90 a month (voice, data, sms)
1) Phone company buys phone at $500 each. Gives customer $100 rebate while selling the phone for $500 (they "loose" $100 because now customer buys phone for 400).
**but this is where they make back any money lost and more**
2) customer signs up for a 2 year contract paying $90 month; 24months multiply by $90monthly = $2160
3) now subtract that $500 they originally paid for the phone from the manufactures: $2160 -$500 = $1660, hmmm so they tripled they're original cost.....but its not done yet
4) remember customer had to pay $400 upfront to actually get the phone, so add that money back to their $1660 = $2060
so they're making roughly $2000 an any customer who's paying $90 dollars a month for 2 years. (this not taking into account equipment cost such as cellular towers/data towers, employees, etc).
businesses pays less on each device, but the fact they buy in quantities both device and contract the phone companies more than make back the difference.
if I'm wrong someone correct me.
So for them to stop selling a variety of phones especially winMo devices, then they basically stop supporting a huge part of their revenue stream. i doubt they would really do that, because that would be a really stupid move.
master athlon said:
I was checking up on GSMArena and found this article and almost had an heart attack when I saw the title. It's interesting how much hell the iPhone has caused WinMo. Now I hope more than ever that MS gets things done with WinMo7. Read on fellow WinMo lovers and US AT&T customers!
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Like all the other articles, it says ATT branded phones will probably all be symbian, but all the rest of the OSes will still be in the lineup. Right now, ATT Wireless customer service has to support regular phones, WinMo, symbian, etc. Apple supports the iPhone. If you've ever called ATT Wireless CS, you'd know this decision could be a very good thing. The outsourced CS techs would only have to know one OS (hopefully better than they do now, spread over several OSes), while the hansets running any other OS would be supported by the handset manufacturers. Since Symbian is the longterm OS of choice anywhere outside the US, this makes sense.
Why do you think Viewsonic decided to put together a device with some of the best tablet hardwares out there and then put a crappy software interface on there? If a bunch of people online could put together a more stable and faster rom for free, why not a multi-million dollar industry?
I guess I'm wondering why these really big electronic companies decided to shoot themselves in the foot over and over.
Because they were first to market by about 9 months with a Tegra2 tablet. Everyone else (Motorola, Asus, etc) waited until nVidia had a stable SDK, before pushing their wares out, and even still, Motorola is the first to do it out of the big guys.
Viewsonic just made the mistake of going to Tap'N'Tap to get it done. They should have gone with a Tier 1 Android integrater, like Wind River (oddly enough, owned by Intel now). Wind River is all over this stuff and already has Tegra3 in their sights for early fall.
h3llphyre said:
Because they were first to market by about 9 months with a Tegra2 tablet. Everyone else (Motorola, Asus, etc) waited until nVidia had a stable SDK, before pushing their wares out, and even still, Motorola is the first to do it out of the big guys.
Viewsonic just made the mistake of going to Tap'N'Tap to get it done. They should have gone with a Tier 1 Android integrater, like Wind River (oddly enough, owned by Intel now). Wind River is all over this stuff and already has Tegra3 in their sights for early fall.
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I agree!! Tap'N'Tap can't even design a good UI for their website (it's not even a website, really it's just a landing page), why anyone would think Tap'N'Tap can design a more difficult UI is beyond me. Lol.
http://www.tapntap.com/
You also have to realize that it TRULY isn't even a Viewsonic product. I don't even know what their true involvement is (are they the one's 'in bed' with tap n tap?)
US Merchants is re-boxing the Malata product similar to how Dell, HP, Acer does thier PC's. I still don't know how Viewsonic got involved, did US Merchants just need a big name behind them. I did get a number to a Rep for Viewsonic that I looked up in LinkedIn and she used to work for US Merchants (or maybe the other way around).
i wish I knew how this partnership came about?
the3dman said:
I agree!! Tap'N'Tap can't even design a good UI for their website (it's not even a website, really it's just a landing page), why anyone would think Tap'N'Tap can design a more difficult UI is beyond me. Lol.
http://www.tapntap.com/
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Probably because Tap'N'Tap was the cheapest. Remember, to meet the price point, Viewsonic had to make some sacrifices. Look at the price of the Xoom and most of the other upcoming Tegra2 tablets. Viewsonic's price is HALF.
Plus, personally, I'd rather have the software be crap. Can change that and because of the awesome devs here, that's a reality.
it2steve said:
You also have to realize that it TRULY isn't even a Viewsonic product. I don't even know what their true involvement is (are they the one's 'in bed' with tap n tap?)
US Merchants is re-boxing the Malata product similar to how Dell, HP, Acer does thier PC's. I still don't know how Viewsonic got involved, did US Merchants just need a big name behind them. I did get a number to a Rep for Viewsonic that I looked up in LinkedIn and she used to work for US Merchants (or maybe the other way around).
i wish I knew how this partnership came about?
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Because Contract Manufacturing has now turned into Contract Engineer/Design AND Manufacturing. Most of the time, design is done in Taiwan, manufacturing in mainland China. It's been going on now for almost a decade (that I've personally seen). It's cheaper for Viewsonic and it's easier for a CMO to enter the US market that way. No one is going to buy a Malata product, but Viewsonic? Maybe. You'll see this a lot at Bestbuy, when name brand TVs look suspiciously like the no name brands.
h3llphyre said:
Because Contract Manufacturing has now turned into Contract Engineer/Design AND Manufacturing. Most of the time, design is done in Taiwan, manufacturing in mainland China. It's been going on now for almost a decade (that I've personally seen). It's cheaper for Viewsonic and it's easier for a CMO to enter the US market that way. No one is going to buy a Malata product, but Viewsonic? Maybe. You'll see this a lot at Bestbuy, when name brand TVs look suspiciously like the no name brands.
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Or no brand at all. I've seen quite a few of those in stores like best buy, office depot, etc. nowadays. They look and feel exactly like those made by the well known brands, but try to look for a stamp of the brand and you won't find any.
Speaking of which, is viewsonic a legit American brand or is it a company of 5 employees created just to slap an American sounding name on a Chinese product?
goodintentions said:
Or no brand at all. I've seen quite a few of those in stores like best buy, office depot, etc. nowadays. They look and feel exactly like those made by the well known brands, but try to look for a stamp of the brand and you won't find any.
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Best Buy has moved from generic brands to their house brand (Insignia). I have an Insignia Plasma, that is a Samsung Plasma (I took it apart, it's all Samsung inside).
Speaking of which, is viewsonic a legit American brand or is it a company of 5 employees created just to slap an American sounding name on a Chinese product?
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Viewsonic still makes amazing displays (ironic with the crappy display on the G Tablet).
goodintentions said:
Why do you think Viewsonic decided to put together a device with some of the best tablet hardwares out there and then put a crappy software interface on there? If a bunch of people online could put together a more stable and faster rom for free, why not a multi-million dollar industry?
I guess I'm wondering why these really big electronic companies decided to shoot themselves in the foot over and over.
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Most likely Viewsonic wanted to get the tablet on the market before Christmas to take advantage of the holiday shopping season - tablets were a hot commodity if you recall - and the state of the software was simply what was available at the time. Somebody had to make a call and they decided to ship.
Unfortunately that decision backfired on them because the software was not ready for prime time.
Is it me or are the standard tablet prices way too high?
Just checked the pricing for Sony Tablet S (Wi-Fi only) £399/$499 (16GB) and £499/$599 (32GB) with the 3G version roughly 100 more.
Not blaming Sony for this as all companies seem to be inflated.
If all companies were to take a look at the recent HP Touchpad saga, can they not see the potential if the prices were lower? (Maybe not to that extent, but you catch my drift hopefully).
As consumers, if we were to all agree worldwide that we were not going to pay these prices for something we believe should be at least a couple of £/$100 cheaper. Wouldn't companies have to eventually reduce prices due the poor sales?
P.s. TO MODS - If this belongs in Q & A apologies.
I think that the tablet market is still preadolescence. I believe that this will be the case for at least one or two more years then we can expect the tablet market to become more competitive on high quality tablets.
Hell yeah. But these companies have to make a profit or at least break even on the hardware.
I got a Streak 7 for $150. Loved it. I'm looking to find a Xoom or Transformer now.
Its all about searching for deals I guess.
@MeInGatineau - The Touchpad industry being young in it's life cycle is true, but as it stands there is enough competition to drive prices down. Companies will only do this if we refuse to buy at the inflated prices.
@vetvito - The companies do not "need to" make profit/break even on hardware so early, they "want to". The combination of software sales, economies of scale and cheaper components etc. in the long run should make them more than enough profit.
Have a Nook cost 200 bucks
A Asus EE tablet 380.00
A Samsung 10.1 paid 480.00
and a 32 gig Touchpad Paid 230.00 for it.
Cost is driven more by hype and perception than by academic business models.
All the above are 100-300.00 more in the stores if you buy "off the shelf"retail.
Always NEVER do that unless you are rich.
Typically the way electronics work is : They R/D a design and get it to manufacture , once there, they figure the baseline amount needed to be sold @ a given price in order to break even (recoup all costs for the project) Then , after they pass that mark costs begin to decline.... unless it is a hot seller then they exploit the hype of the market for the extra profit benefit it brings for as long as it lasts.
Apple is better at keeping the hype up than most other people in the market today, which explains why they have a following, you get less and pay more for it, and think it is a deal. NOW! that's great marketing !!!
If you really want to know more on this and markets and how they work just look at the Intel chip market.
Yes tablets are expensive at the moment but I don't think this immediately points to greedy manufacturers with big profit margins. Developing the tablets are quite costly and they are probably just covering their costs. Once they gain experience and pick up, I'm sure scales of economy kick and and products will become cheaper. Exactly how the laptop market has gone.
Competition will always drive prices down but no manufacturer is going to sell the tablet at a loss unless they are able to re-coop that money from elsewhere. E.g. Amazon sell the Kindle at a loss as they make money on the ebooks. Carriers sell mobile phones at a loss as they make money on the tariffs and carrier services used.
HP were selling the TouchPad for a loss. They could do this because the alternative was probably a greater loss.
Just Me said:
@vetvito - The companies do not "need to" make profit/break even on hardware so early, they "want to". The combination of software sales, economies of scale and cheaper components etc. in the long run should make them more than enough profit.
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I don't see how software sales would make profit for a tablet manufacturer? Most tablet manufacturers opportunities for profit are with the tablet sales and official accessories for that tablet.
I would argue that manufacturers do need to make profit/break even as quickly as possible. Manufacturers cannot afford to have long drawn out periods for products to break even. They do not know how they will sell, what competition will do or any of the other million factors that affect economy.
This isn't to say pricing them high will get them to break even as quickly as possible. Because if they are too high then they will not get enough sales.
@oka1 - That is my partly my point. There are deals to be had if you shop around, but why are the prices not discounted in the first place. The person/company that you bought from, would have bought from 1-2 people before you and it is likely that they all made money from each item.
I also have a Touchpad but the 16GB version, which I paid £127. Above the insane price of £89, but now that I have it, I realise I might have paid £200, but the £350+ price tag was ridiculous imo.
Also, I get your R&D point to an extent, but then why bring out a newer model with only slightly better features in 6 to 12 months and price it at the same price, as the original. Surely the the R&D cost wouldn't have increased significantly for the new product
@Techno79 - I'm not in the industry, but I can't really see the development cost being high enough to justify such a high selling price. I know it's not as straight forward as this but, tablets are generally just big smart phones, some with less features (e.g. Wi-Fi only).
In comparison the laptops that you mention are probably more costly to build, but are cheaper and have a lot more functions.
My point is, I don't believe they have to sell them for as much as they do and if, as a society, simplified, we all turned around and said drop the price by a couple of 100 and we'll all buy one, they would.
My software sales point was more at certain companies that get a % of sales revenue for apps sold, but true it's probably not the case for all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that companies don't need to survive, I'm just saying, they should give a little back to the consumer that buy their products and help them make the vast amounts of profit they do.
In reality, as long as people are giving up their money as easy as they do, companies will sell at a premium.
hi
hi. this is just a test message
Yeah, it's too bad that companies want to make a profit.
Sent from my Galaxy Tab using Tapatalk
hp tablets
i just heard they were getting rid of these for like $99 bucks for 16gb
not a bad deal, can anyone confirm?
dutchman22 said:
i just heard they were getting rid of these for like $99 bucks for 16gb
not a bad deal, can anyone confirm?
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They sold millions in 2 days for that price and now they are sold out. I got mine off some guy who bought one and marked up 75 bucks
Just Me said:
@oka1
@Techno79 - I'm not in the industry, but I can't really see the development cost being high enough to justify such a high selling price. I know it's not as straight forward as this but, tablets are generally just big smart phones, some with less features (e.g. Wi-Fi only).
In comparison the laptops that you mention are probably more costly to build, but are cheaper and have a lot more functions.
My point is, I don't believe they have to sell them for as much as they do and if, as a society, simplified, we all turned around and said drop the price by a couple of 100 and we'll all buy one, they would.
My software sales point was more at certain companies that get a % of sales revenue for apps sold, but true it's probably not the case for all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that companies don't need to survive, I'm just saying, they should give a little back to the consumer that buy their products and help them make the vast amounts of profit they do.
In reality, as long as people are giving up their money as easy as they do, companies will sell at a premium.
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If you breakdown the different parts of a tablet's cost then you'll have something like this:
Hardware costs
Retail mark up
Taxes
Manufacturing/production costs
Manufacturer's Profit
Manufacturer's profit first has to cover the huge costs of R&D, marketing and service/maintenance. These combined costs run up in the millions and will take a lot of sales before they break even. I would guess that they'd need to sell 100s of thousands before they get to break even point. So, until they reach those sales figures, I do believe they are justified in selling a high selling price. Obviously, I'm not saying I like high costs but I do think the current Android tablet price points are somewhat justified.
Tablets may be larger versions of mobile phones, but like I said before, mobile phones can be sold at a loss as they offset the loss against consumers signing up to 12/18/24 month carrier plans and using additional cost services with that carrier. Take a look at SIM free mobile phone costs if you really want to compare like for like. Top end mobile phones can cost nearly £500.
Also, some of R&D can be reused from previous generation of devices. Manufacturers are probably on their 100th generation of laptops where as Android tablets are at the most on their 3rd or 4th generation and thus still very new. I think for this reason, laptops are probably cheaper to produce.
Competition also drives prices down a lot and there is obviously more competition with laptops than there is with tablets. When laptops were fairly new, they would cost well over £1000 for a decent model which is far more than the tablets at the moment. It's only in the last few years that laptops have been fairly cheap. I'm sure tablets will get to that point a lot quicker but I doubt we'll see that before end of 2011.
Also, not all tablets will be a super seller. Some tablets will flop and never cover their R&D and marketing costs. It's down to profits from other tablets that cover these costs.
I'm all for lower tablet costs but from manufacturers perspective, I don't see anything wrong with the current price points of Android tablets given how new Android tablets are and the level of competition in the market. It's guaranteed that costs will eventually come down.
Very valid points. I fully understand that everything you said is pretty much true, but there are many counter arguments to your points, so I'll agree to disagree overall.
But going back to what should have probably been the first line in the thread and not the last (I can see why the thread went the way it did, instead of the way I wanted):
"As consumers, if we were to all agree worldwide that we were not going to pay these prices for something we believe should be at least a couple of £/$100 cheaper. Wouldn't companies have to eventually reduce prices due the poor sales?"
Would this work? Or would the tablet market slowly die out?
Just Me said:
Very valid points. I fully understand that everything you said is pretty much true, but there are many counter arguments to your points, so I'll agree to disagree overall.
But going back to what should have probably been the first line in the thread and not the last (I can see why the thread went the way it did, instead of the way I wanted):
"As consumers, if we were to all agree worldwide that we were not going to pay these prices for something we believe should be at least a couple of £/$100 cheaper. Wouldn't companies have to eventually reduce prices due the poor sales?"
Would this work? Or would the tablet market slowly die out?
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I personally don't think this would work. There are many consumers who are extremely well off and are happy to pay the high price for early adoption. How would someone be able to co-ordinate such a consumer boycott. I think the current natural system works. If a manufacturer releases a product at too higher price, then less consumers will purchase it. As time goes on, and the product gets cheaper, more consumers are likely to jump on board to buy. However, if the product remains too high a price for the duration of the products life, then this will be seen with low total sales and low profit margins for the manufacturer (possibly even a loss). The manufacturer "should" learn their lesson and make the next product at a better price point.
If manufacturers can make more profit from selling 100k products at a high price than selling 1M products at a low price then they need some other incentive to sell at low price point.
Hypothetically speaking, if we could agree between all consumers to not buy the tablets at their high price to force manufacturers to release them at a low price then the profit margins could be so low that manufacturers give up on tablets as they realise they can get more profit from netbook/laptop and other consumer devices. So yes, I do think a global boycott for the high initial early adoption cost could kill the tablet market.
Practically, in here, yes they are. But comparatively with other devices/gadgets, the current tablet market is decently-priced.
Just like everything else the prices will drop after all the early adopters jump. There will be more choices and lower price points.
Guys, i bought a LeTV x600. Excited about this phone and the new (yet big) company in the phone world, i went to watch their presentation. It looks they are selling this phone, other models too, at cost price! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WHNbrYGWQM&feature=youtu.be&t=6395
Their idea is to sell at cost price and make profit from their streamming service (they are the chinese netflix) used from the phones of course. Chinese companies are already releasing flagship phones for half the price. Some are really great. But this could be a paradigm shift in the way of doing business. I mean most companies have to get profit from phones, they don't have "other" services in order to make up for selling the phones at cost price. Operators already do something similar to this, the phone is for free, but they obligate you to use their network for 1 or 2 years. We can buy this phone with no obligation to use their streamming service.
I'm no business expert, Apple and Samsung will always be Apple and Samsung, but i think this could really hurt the small/medium players. This is not a "cheap" badly made phone just for the purpose of watching stuff. Just watch the reviews about it.
Think HP selling printers at low price, hopping to get the real (and absurdly high) profit from ink.
What do you think about this?
On a sidenote, the LeTV ROM have some nasty/lame bugs and they are being a bit slow to fix them. IMHO, nowadays most phones are released inmmaturely. Sure, smartphones are more complex than older phones, but still companies could spend a bit more time doing QA on them. They understimate the work and time to have a really mature software. But time runs fast nowadays. Having great specs on a phone is not enough. I think on this case, if LeTV doesn't change their attitude, they can say bye bye to their great idea. Because customers are impatient and don't forgive much.
In today’s information overload environment, I believe some of you are interested in the novelties and news in the smartphone industry but are overwhelmed by promotional articles and advertisements online. Don’t worry, let me summarise the top 5 breaking news in the smartphone industry in May.
The smartphone notch is a status symbol. LG surveyed over 1,000 people across the US, UK, Italy, and Korea. The results show that only about 30 percent said no to it, while the rest of the participants indicates that they either liked or don’t mind the notch. So whether you like it or not, the smartphone notch is here to stay (https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/02/lg-g7-people-like-the-notch/).
Sophisticated Android malware tracks all your phone activities. An advanced type of malware can spy on nearly every Android smartphone function and steal password, photos, videos from apps, targeting at the subjects in the Middle East (https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/07/zoopark-android-malware-exfiltration/).
China’s XiaoMi files for mega Hong Kong IPO. XiaoMi filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering on last Thursday, being the largest listing by a Chinese tech company in almost 4 years (https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...ts-lid-on-financials/articleshow/64008892.cms).
Apple faces camera patent lawsuit over iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. The Israel-based startup Corephotonics filed a second lawsuit against Apple, claiming that Apple is coping its dual-camera system. It will certainly be interesting to see where this case goes. The Corephotonics have to show that Apple utilised the tech that the company presented in its meeting (https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/01/apple-dual-camera-patent-lawsuit-coretronics-iphone-x/).
Honor10 launch event in London. Honor has scheduled a launch event on 15th May in London and it is highly possible that it will unveil the Honor10 smartphone at that time. Personally, the honor9 is a nice product that guarantees value for money so that Honor10 is worth expecting (https://www.facebook.com/honorglobal/ ).
Among these big things in smartphone industry, which one do you prefer or which one do you have comments on?