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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Hi guys,
I wanted to share some data with you that you won't be able to find anywhere else. I hope you all find it useful.
This report covers the global smartphone market for the first half of FY2014-15 which runs from April 1st through to September 30th. I have made sure the data used in this report is as accurate as possible and even included a number of data points that are not available publicly.
0. Global Market - 628.9m
A total of 628.9m smartphones were shipped between April 1st and September 30th this year. This is a 25% increase over the same period last year when a total of 501.7m smartphones were shipped. Smartphone shipments are set to continue growing and in the same period next year we should see over 750m smartphones shipped. Android held the largest share this half year with approximately 525m Android devices shipped. This is equal to around 84% market share. Apple shipped a total of 74.5m iOS devices in H1 giving them a total of just under 12% market share. Windows Phone was the third biggest OS with a total of ~18m shipments which gives them around 3% market share. Around 95% of all Windows Phone shipments were Lumia branded devices, around 29% of all Android smartphones were Samsung branded devices.
1. Samsung - 152.4m
Samsung was the biggest smartphone vendor once again with 152.4m smartphones shipped during H1 FY2014-15. This gives Samsung an overall 24% market share which is down from the 32% market share that Samsung had during the same period last year. Samsung has seen increased competition in China where a number of local Chinese brands have taken over, In Europe where price consciousness is starting to grow and even in the USA where Apple is putting up a fight. Although Samsung has long relied on its high-end devices, its mid-range and low-end models drove volume for the quarter and subsequently drove down ASPs. Samsung was the only company to lose significant market share out of the big 5. During H1, Samsung sold in a total of 29m Galaxy S5 units worldwide and Galaxy S4 cumulative sales have now reached over 65m.
2. Apple – 74.5m
Apple was the second largest smartphone vendor in H1 with a market share of 12%. During the same period last year, Apple sold in a total of 65m giving them a 13% market share at the time. Despite growing this year, it’s clear that Apple are not growing at the same rate as the smartphone market and therefore are expected to drop to under 10% market share before the end of 2015. Apple launched the iPhone 6 in the final month of H1 and sold in 10 million units during the opening weekend. The iPhone 5s sold in 39.5m units in CY2013 and Apple are expecting to ship more than 50m units of the iPhone 6 in CY2014. So far, Apple has sold in over 600 million iPhones since launch in 2007*.
*As of October 2014
3. Lenovo/Motorola – 50.3m
After acquiring Motorola, Lenovo is now the third biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world with an 8% market share. When looking at separate numbers for H1 FY2014-15 we can see that Lenovo sold in 32.7m units and Motorola sold in 17.6m units. Lenovo are aiming for another 50 million units during H2 to reach over 100 million cumulative units shipped by March 31st 2015. Lenovo has found success in emerging markets such as Africa, Middle East, Asia and its home country of China where it has released a number of low cost 4G handsets. Motorola has seen success in western markets but has started to tap into a number of emerging markets such as South America.
4. Huawei – 37.1m
Huawei have done very well this year gaining a 6% market share with over 37 million units shipped. This can be attributed with Huawei’s push with 4G LTE devices and brand promotion across all markets. The Huawei Ascend P6 has sold in more than 5 million units since launch, the Ascend P7 has sold in more than 3 million units and the Honor 6 has sold in over 2 million units. Huawei’s latest flagship phone, the Ascend Mate 7 has sold in 1 million units in China and Huawei are planning to sell in a further 600,000 units this month to the EMEA region. Around 35% of the phones shipped during H1 support 4G LTE and Huawei’s mobile device business has grown by 62% YOY. Huawei plan to ship over 60 million smartphones in CY2014.
5. Xiaomi – 35.0m
Xiaomi have come out of nowhere to become the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer worldwide. If you look at Motorola and Lenovo’s figures separately then Xiaomi would in fact be the fourth largest manufacturer. Not many people know who Xiaomi are as over 90% of their shipments are to China with the remaining 10% being sold in to emerging markets such as India and south east Asia. Xiaomi have yet to tap into the western market but it looks like they don’t need to as they’ve grown rapidly in the past year. During the same period last year Xiaomi barely scratched 10 million units. This year their shipment number has more than tripled. Xiaomi are aiming to ship 60 million units in CY2014 and 100 million units in CY2015. Xiaomi are set to overtake Huawei in terms of cumulative shipments this financial year.
6. LG Electronics – 31.3m
LG saw smartphone shipments increase by 30% YOY during H1 FY2014-15. This is thanks to the launch of the LG G3 and the L Series smartphones. The G3 itself has sold in more than 7 million units worldwide with over 1 million allocated to South Korea alone. LG plan to ship 60 million smartphones during CY2014. North America will be the biggest contributor to LG this year where shipments have grown by around 40%. LTE smartphones are up by over 100% YOY.
7. Coolpad – 24.4m
Coolpad are a smartphone brand in China. Despite the fact they only ship in China they are the 7th largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. In China they are leading the way in 4G smartphone shipments after launching over 12 new 4G models this year. Coolpad won’t ever reach the same shipment numbers that other Chinese manufacturers like Lenovo, Xiaomi and Huawei will get to because they ship domestically whilst the others rely on the international market for increased sales.
8. ZTE – 21.5m
ZTE are a Chinese brand who sell a number of low end devices and rebranded devices in the UK. They were once on par in terms of shipments with Huawei but Huawei have expended massively thanks to their international expansion, ZTE are still yet to grow massively outside of Asia. But Asia is still enough to give ZTE the 8th position in terms of worldwide shipments.
9. TCL – 19.6m
Many of you may not have heard of TCL, over here in the west they are known as Alcatel and they are becoming a major brand worldwide this year thanks to their “One Touch” series. During H1 they shipped a total of 19.6m which is a 130% increase from 8.5m during the same period last year. TCL has seen the biggest revenue increase in the Americas region and is on track to sell in over 35 million smartphones this fiscal year. What many people don’t know is that TCL is actually massive when you combine their smartphone + feature phone shipments, only 53% of their total shipments are smartphones. That means that TCL have already shipped 40 million smartphones + feature phones this Half year.
10. Sony – 19.3m
Sony is not in the best of places. They were committed to selling in 50 million smartphones for FY2014-15 but after looking at H1 results it looks like it won’t be possible. The Z series smartphones have been very popular for Sony but not popular enough to increase sales significantly YOY. In fact sales are actually around 300,000 less than they were during the same period last year. Sony has reduced its forecast to just 41m for FY2014-15.
Honourable Mention: Microsoft – 17.0m
After acquiring the Lumia brand, Microsoft hasn’t been able to break the top 10 with a total of 17.0m units sold in during H1 FY2014-15. The Lumia brand accounts for around ~95% of all Windows Phone smartphones and so it can be seen that Windows Phone hasn’t taken off yet. Growth has stagnated YOY and no one is expecting Windows Phone market share to grow at all. Windows Phone will always be that “third place” OS.
Others-
- Blackberry sold in over 4 million smartphones worldwide during H1 FY2014-15. This is down compared to the almost 6 million sold in during the same period last year. Blackberry has increased active BBM users to over 90 million despite falling shipment numbers. This can be attributed to the launch of the free BBM application on Android/iOS last year.
- HTC are not to be seen on the top 10 list anymore. In CY2013 they sold in over 23 million units and in CY2014 they are expected to sell in over 20 million units this calendar year. HTC has sold in more than 5 million units of its flagship M8 handset.
- Oppo plan to ship over 20 million smartphones in CY2014 after shipping 15 million in CY2013.
- Asus are planning to ship 8 million units worldwide in CY2014. In H1 FY2014-15 they have shipped a total of 3.6m units.
- Acer are planning to increase shipments to 5m units worldwide in CY2014
- One Plus, the new Chinese smartphone brand has shipped 500,000 units of their flagship smartphone worldwide.
Active smartphone install base:
There is now over 2 billion active smartphone users worldwide. Android accounts for 75% with 1.5 million active smartphone users, Apple accounts for 375 million, Windows Phone accounts for 60 million smartphone users and Blackberry has 40 million. The other category accounts for over 30 million.
Conclusion
It’s all about China. Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei, Coolpad, ZTE and TCL are all looking to ship between 35m-100m smartphones this calendar year. Samsung and Apple’s market share is continuing to shrink but all major Chinese manufacturers continue to grow year on year, Xiaomi being the best example to use with over 300% growth. Doesn’t mean to say Samsung and Apple are going anywhere soon, they will continue to be the top 2 but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lenovo overtake Apple in 2016 and Samsung eventually lose its first place position in a few years. What is certain Is that the cumulative number of smartphones being sold in by Chinese manufacturers is going to continue growing significantly and they will have majority market share by 2015.
All data is sourced by me either through public Industry reports or private Industry sources. I have over 3 years experience in the telecommunications industry and have access to a number of data points.
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SAN FRANCISCO, Jan.29, 2018 — The technical giant Tencent, decided to explore Crowdsourced CDNs provided by Newifi router to accelerate its self-developed Game King of Glory. This top-grossing game is the mobile version of League of Legends, which already owned 200 million users in China and also generated $5 billion revenue in 2017.
Tencent’s decision of working with Newifi not only shows that the Tencent’s great social consciousness, but also shows that Tencent has strong willingness to explore the blockchain application and development with potential tech startups.
Newifi‘s blockchain project breaks the traditional concept of CDN service providers and cloud service providers. The 7621A dual-core processor, 512MB RAM, 32M Flash newifi 3 is the only smart router available nowadays for mining in the global market. This means that every ordinary family can have this premier router to share idle bandwidth and storage resources. In return, they will be assigned tokens through smart contract.
““Sharing and Mining is a new fashion in the Silicon Valley, “said Emma Russell, the CEO of Gmine, which is the seller and distributor for Newifi 3 in the US.” Newifi 3 has been known by many engineers in the Valley. We will put the routers into every American family. On January 30, this Tuesday, the product will be launched in the US.”
The blockchain revolution has arrived. It has been recognized not only by technology and electronics hardware companies, but also by investment agencies and internet giants. Newifi’s sharing concept, environmental friendly nature, and low barrier of entry for acquisition of mining hardware will help Newifi to make one step ahead of the revolution.
About Newifi Hardware team
Newifi 3 router, the first blockchain-powered router in the world, was developed and launched by Diting Technology. The tech startup launched mini Newifi, Newifi 2 with Lenovo and Baidu in 2014 and was listed on New Third Board in China in January, 2016.
About Newifi Router
Newifi 3 has been on the market for 15 months with more than 200,000 users in China.
The Newifi 3 also has other stellar features, such as photo album backup, unregistered device alerts, multi-screen interaction and security protection. All these features are making Newifi 3 the best NAS for everyone from typical users to freelancers, photographer, and videographer enthusiasts.
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?