IPad's Rivals Can't Beat It on Price

"Real artists ship"<p>Not trying to flame here, but Apple has a track record of shipping solid, complete devices, at a great price point, with a known track record of updates. They also have some seriously polished apps - software differentiation is becoming more and more apparent.<p>The competition, not so much. You have Android devices that may or may not get firmware updates, and "to be released" devices from HP and RIM.<p>I'd love to see some serious competition, but until the rest of the market can drive prices down on hardware at the wholesale level, it's going to be rough for everyone who isn't Apple.

&#62;<i>iPad's Rivals Can't Beat it on Price</i><p>The title of this article causes me anguish. It should read "IPad's Rivals Can't Beat it on Cost." Businesses compete on value and on cost. Value is the benefit to the customer (value proposition) and cost is the fixed and variable expenses to the firm for producing that value (cost structure). Value and cost are strategic, and price is a tactical choice that follows from your value-cost position and the competition. If a business offers more value at a given price, relative to a competitor, it will gain market share. If a business has a lower cost at a given price, relative to a competitor, it will have higher margins.<p>Confusing price and cost has caused the downfall of established companies. For instance, in 2003, Delta launched its Song subsidiary to compete with Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue. Delta conceptualized Song as a "low-price airline," while Southwest and Jet Blue are low-cost airlines. What happens when you compete with low-prices, but are burdened by the high-cost structure of a legacy airline, such as Delta? Song was disbanded in 2006, after considerable losses.

I think all this bragging about price and also about the number of apps is just premature. We are obviously at the beginning of the Android response. It took Google a year to release their response to the iPad and Xoom is the first product based on it. It was just released a couple weeks ago. You can argue that the competition has been slow to respond but this is not the full response yet, there is no way the iPad will own &#62;90% of this market by the end of the year.<p>By the end of this year there will be tons of android tablets and tons of apps. As with the phones, the hardware will be all over the place in terms of price and quality, but just as with the phones the onslaught of announcements and features and price points will be too much and they will slowly but surely become more and more compelling.<p>It's been said that 2011 will be the year of the tablet. Apple is once again the king of the hill with a huge headstart. But the droids are coming. As Anonymous says, expect them.

One thing I both do and don't understand is all this fidgeting around with the form factor. I think the Xoom is the closest to an iPad in form factor, but the rest are all over the map.<p>While I do understand the desire to test out different sizes/weights/features etc. to see if Apple was close but not quite spot on with their first shot out of the gate (who knows? an 8" $1000 tablet could wipe the floor with everybody), it overlooks the simple fact that in the mind of consumers the iPad represents what a tablet looks and feels like.<p>If you are going to make a tablet then, you <i>must</i> fit the consumer's expectations, not try and carve a niche somewhere else.<p>Make a tablet, the exact shape and size and weight of an iPad, make it $50-100 cheaper all around, toss in a regular 'ol USB slot and an SD card and you'll probably have a hit. <i>none</i> of the present, weirdly shaped and overly priced Android tablets have any appeal to me whatsoever.<p>Better to credibly compete in the market, then when you own some part of it, fiddle around with the form factor and see what else sells.

Is there any evidence that samsung or motorola are trying to beat apple on price? The high end smartphones from both manufacturers seem to happily sit around the same price point as apple's phone.<p>Give it another six months or so and I'm sure you'll see some decidedly cheaper dual core 3.0 tablets from the 2nd tier oems like huwai as mentioned, archos, viewsonic, etc. Now, <i>they</i> want to compete on price. Whether tablets are commodity items or status symbols remains to be seen though. So far it seems mostly like the latter.

The App store is only one of the ways that Apple builds out its network advantage.<p>Facetime; developer ecosystem; having complementary products like computers, ipod, Mobile.Me means that every customer Apple captures has a higher lifetime value than a Xoom customer to Motorola.

There's another thing that its competitors can't match. Steve Jobs's willingness to ruthlessly "knife the baby" if necessary, even if the "baby" is a product that is a large source of revenue. The iPod Mini was EOL'ed with the introduction of the iPod Nano.

<i>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. </i><p>This is only partially correct. Apple's retail stores are expensive to run, and that cost is Apple's.

"So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."<p>Looks like all the dots are connecting perfects for Jobs and Apple more and more.

The nook color is on sale for $200 and runs honeycomb. Same basic specs as the galaxy tab. Obviously not something the NYT could recommend, but any HN reader should find it easy to set up.

AlwaysInnovating's touchbook beats the iPad on price, last I checked.<p><a href="http://alwaysinnovating.com/" rel="nofollow">http://alwaysinnovating.com/</a>

Isn't this funny? Usually Apple products are ridiculously expensive. Have they <i>ever</i> held the but-it's-cheap card before?