Chinese whisper of low-cost Kindle-confounding iPad

Smaller model too?

By Tony Smith, 13th October 2011

Given that many a fanboy's assumption that Apple would announce a new-design iPhone earlier this month derived from claims made to market analysts by sources within Chinese component makers, you should probably treat the following with some scepticism.

For what it's worth, more of those oriental moles have told Brian White, an analyst with US stockbrokership Ticonderoga Securities, that Apple will announce an "iPad Mini" early next year.

You might think that means a 7in iPad, and it may well do so, but in fact the comments coming out of China actually refer to a mini-price iPad, a low-cost model intended, White reckons, to counter the likes of Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire, seen by many as the only tablet currently able to give the iPad a run for its money.

White told investors he thinks the 'cheap' iPad could be priced "in the mid-to-high $200 range.

Apple has traditionally steered clear of low-price products, preferring to trade sales volumes for the value a premium brand brings.

Still, it's not hard to envisage Apple launching a high-spec iPad 3 in February 2012 - a year on from the iPad 2 launch - while knocking down the price of the iPad 2 a little, just as it has with the iPhone 4 now the 4S is out. ®

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Posted Thursday 13th October 2011 11:21 GMT

handle

"low-cost Kindle confounding iPad"

Because you omitted a hyphen between "Kindle" and "confounding", you gave completely the opposite meaning to the headline from that which was intended.

Posted Thursday 13th October 2011 11:25 GMT

Anonymous Coward

times are a-changing

"Apple has traditionally steered clear of low-price products, preferring to trade sales volumes for the value a premium brand brings."

Don't reckon that model works any more - not with content consumption devices like iPads and iPods. They've got to be cheap enough to compete because there's not a lot of secret sauce. The payback is revenue from the content that's consumed.

So I, for one, don't discount the rumours. Content /is/ king, in this case.

Posted Thursday 13th October 2011 11:24 GMT

Arctic fox

I am not sure about this one.

What is Amazon's big strength and why is it selling the "Fire" so cheap (I pose the question rhetorically)? Content, content and yet again content. Even if Apple made a version of the iPad intended to compete with Amazon's price they would still not be challenging Amazon on content. Apple make very well built kit (doesn't float my boat but fairs fair) and have a famously loyal customer base, however, can they seriously challenge Amazon over content? *That* is the issue here.