Samsung admits iPad 2 will be tough to beat
Price a problem in particular
A Samsung executive has admitted that beating the iPad 2's skinniness will be a challenge.
The new Apple fondleslab, priced to match the first-gen model, will also force the South Korean giant to rethink its pricing policy, Lee Don-joo, an executive VP at Samsung's mobile division told local news agency Yonhap.
"Apple made it very thin," he said.
Samsung's "10in [tablet] was to be priced higher than the 7in", he said, "but we will have to think that over."
The Tab is 12mm thick. The first iPad was only fractionally bigger - 13.4mm - and putting the two in your hand, you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference. The 10in Tab is 11mm But the iPad 2 will be 9mm front to back.
Samsung's 10in Galaxy Tab has yet to ship, but it was naturally expected to be pricier than the 7in model.
Amazon.co.uk has the list price of the tablet at £800, though that's being discounted to just £400 - a sign, perhaps, that the Android 2.2 tablet isn't as popular with punters as Samsung hoped it would be.
The 10in model is likely to list at more than £800. Discounts and mobile network operator subsidies will bring that down, of course, but the latter will help the 3G iPad 2 too. But the basic, Wi-Fi only iPad 2 will set the benchmark, and that's £429, with the original iPad now cut to £329. ®
COMMENTS
Economic theory
>bigger manufacturers need bigger profits to pay for all the staff;
>costs them more ... a lot of meetings
Aye. Whatever happened to the "Economies of scale" theory?
Oh yes, it got replaced by "inverted pyramid" management practices.
Why is skinniness important?
Skinniness may be hard to be, but why is that important? It's the least important factor - I don't care that my netbook is slightly thicker for example, when it's still light and portable. (And it's also amusing to note that whenever someone points out actual flaws in Apple's products, the response is always "But why would I need to do that?" - yet completely pointless peculiarities about the producted are touted as being essential things.)
My Samsung netbook is way cheaper than an Ipad, and does more. Samsung are doing fine.
Simples
Cost cutting. It's cheapo plastic, it has a cheaper screen (not IPS that's for sure), cheapest camera. Probably won't matter to the sort of people who buy £250 worth of tablet but some people want to view photos on a tablet with fairly decent colour reproduction.
Also some people want official firmware from the company who designed it, they want to plug it in and have the update done with no fuss.
Like anything you can build up a device with the lowest price parts and it will still do the job. I build and ride bicycles as a hobby and I'm sure I could build a very cheap one that would roll along, change gears and stop when the brakes are applied. But it would be lacking in performance and reliability, plus spare parts or technical support would be impossible to find.
You could say why buy a £1500 carbon road bike when you can get a bike from Halfords for £80. If you don't know why someone spends more than you probably don't know much about what people look for in one. I'll give you a clue, less hassle making it work!
Efficiency
It's as simple as that.
Everything from the OS to the design, manufacturing processes, even bulk acquisition of parts, are all evolutions of already existing Apple-created tech and ongoing R&D. They're already running, while everybody else is trying to replicate what they've done but without the benefit of having all their chess pieces in place already.
The fact that everyone else is having to use an OS made by someone else (Android) is just going to increase their costs, as they have to design hardware to work with the OS, and since they don't have a real hand in future OS features, they're mucking around in the dark. What works today might not work in 6 or 12 months time. That leads to a lot of wastage. It's not efficient: It's expensive.
Not really
the app store only cleared a few percent in profit. it;s income is almost entirely spent in staff, hosting, bandwidth, and more.
the Ipad however does rake in about $200 in profit per unit. unlike Samsung and moto, who sunk millions into development of the tablet, let alone OS customizations, marketing, etc, with zero fallback, in less than a year, and after throwing out several predecessors targeted at Apple's expected $1K iPad 1 pricetag, they have no wiggle room. Apple on the other hand simply leveraged existing iOS, and took 5+ years of slow effort to design their tablet, and a minor revision of it, not to mention spreading that cost over 15m units, not Samsung's 1.5m or moto's few hundred thousand (of which Google gave thousands away free).
Apple has amazing manufacturing effectiveness, low R&D cost, and economy of scale giving them great price leverage at wholesale. they'll accelerate that with their $3.7 investment to get cheap screens in mass later this near no one else will have access to at all, and when they do, make a profit on every one Samsung or moto later include...
Apple made 1 sinle move that guaranteed them this market for a long time. they completely broke tradition, and all expectations with $499. NO ONE expected that. A tablet with iOS, newer better parts, and costing $100 LESS than the base cost of the iPhone 3GS off contract? no one even guessed that was possible... Apple did it, and it worked, and no no one competes, they had almost a whole year unopposed while the competiti0n now has to trow loss leaders at them just to chip away...
