iPad 2 Forces Samsung To Reevaluate Galaxy Tab 520
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's iPad competitors are still spec-obsessed, and Apple's next-gen iPad coupled with the same price point is forcing Samsung to rethink its tablet strategy and pricing methodology altogether. The South Korean Yonhap News Agency relays a quote from Lee Don-joo, executive VP of Samsung's mobile division, about Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1 compared to the new iPad. 'We will have to improve the parts that are inadequate,' Don-joo said. 'Apple made it very thin.' Features aside, Samsung also finds itself in a bind price-wise. The upcoming Galaxy Tab model, complete with a 10.1-inch screen and Android 3.0, was initially going to be priced higher than the current 7-inch Galaxy Tab. Apple's iPad 2, however, is forcing Samsung to 'think that over.'"
Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is awesome news. Competition is good for us!
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
but they aren't losing money on the parts.
Instead Apple is using it's massive cash reserves to buy 10 million of each part ahead of time knowing that they CAN sell them.
Samsung is only buying 2-3 million at a time. he who buys 5 times the parts you are is going to get a better price.
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Expect to see 10" Android tablets for $300 or less by the end of the year.
I hate to bring it up, but that's what everyone said *last year* when the iPad 1 launched (at several hundred dollars under the estimates that people were quoting), and that "cheaper, better" Android tablets would waltz in and crush the iPad. Any day now, just you wait... etc etc for 9 months.
As yet, it has still not happened for tablets of the same spec as the iPad - the Xoom is as close as anyone has come and it is still more/about the same give or take.
Remember everyone saying iPad was overpriced? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is amazing how the conversation changes. I remember a year ago, there was a lot of people dumping on the iPad as overpriced, that they could get a more powerful netbook for hundreds less.
Now today, it is all about how is Apple making them so inexpensive.
Strange...
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is why apple is secret. don't tell people you have a full port for intel, or sparc chips. just make sure it works, wo when you do switch no one will know when until it is too late.
the apple phone rumors started in what 2005? that means apple had 2-3 years more development time than everyone else on the market. The ipad 3 is already under design, it's spec's may have already been mostly set too. competitors are designing to the original ipad, and maybe the ipad2 if they are lucky.
It took the competition 3 years before they couldn't really start to challenge the iphone. First movers have the advantage you can shift target goals easier.
Snore. (Score:0, Insightful)
Since this quote came out last week, Samsung woke up and realized that the greatest feature of the iPad2 is hype. Samsung has more recently chosen to return to the original game plan and just come out with the Tab 10 the way they designed it.
Fanbys will be fanboys. A faster, better, cheaper Android tablet will not influence the diehard Apple fans to even hint at looking away from the iPad2. Tech savvy Apple haters will buy a Xoom or a Tab 10. Everyone else will either be influenced by the extremist nuts closest to them, or just wait until tablets are more useful and better priced. Until then, these flame wars are nothing but petty conjecture.
Re:Change (Score:5, Insightful)
but would you pay more to beta test it too?
The xoom is shipping with a broken sd card slot, no flash(other than the ads saying it has it) and if you want the full 4G modem your paying for you have to mail the unit it)
spending more for a crippled unit doesn't sound right. Apple should be doing that not everyone else.
don't compete on specs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one who knows anything about electronics manufacturing thinks this. The $499 16GB iPad, by all estimations, costs under $250 to manufacture.
No one who knows anything about products thinks this. The tear-down component price estimations are deliberately lowballed, and it costs a lot more than just the sum of the components to take those components and combine them into boxed and shelved iPad, ready for purchase.
Android is going to change that by doing the same thing it did in the smartphone market. Expect to see 10" Android tablets for $300 or less by the end of the year.
Not going to happen, except possibly for some humorously bulky, crappy-screened, and overall completely inadequate caricatures of a proper tablet.
You Android folks were saying this was going to happen by Summer of 2010, then it was Fall 2010, then it became "sometime in 2011" (skipping over the Winter, which was clearly lost by the time Fall came around). If you think there will be iPad-quality Android tablets for under $300, you are going to be quite disappointed when 2012 rolls around. It's not even a sure thing that there will be proper Android tablets for the same price as an iPad by then, let alone $200 cheaper.
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
> The $499 16GB iPad, by all estimations, costs under $250 to manufacture.
I'd be shocked to find Apple paying more than $175 for em off the docks in China and I'd put my money on $150. That is for the basic WiFi version.
Listen up folks, there ain't nothing in a tablet. Compare a typical low end netbook that retails for $300 to a typical tablet.
Tablet has a touchscreen, and motion sensor over a netbook.
The iPad has an IPS display, which you most certainly *don't* find on a typical $300 low end notebook. Also, it's much more/much different inside, not much less (unless you are talking simply mass and volume which is not relevant to the price of the parts and assembly). You have all sorts of additional sensors and IO. The iPad is also made of aluminum and glass, not plastic and plastic.
This story is a sign that market forces are likely to start working more normally. $250-$350 tablets by Xmas that have capacitive touchscreens, motion sensors and robust ARM chips is my prediction.
And if you really think they cost $175, fully packaged and ready to ship, then Apple will still be able to undercut these tablets. Tablets which are somehow magically going to cost 1/3 of what they cost now. Tablets which have sold extremely poorly and if they actually *could* undercut the iPad by half, they should have done so long ago.
No, we won't see proper tablets, Android or otherwise, for $250-$350 by the end of the year. There might be some laughable attempts, but nothing that really competes with an iPad or a compelling Android tablet.
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Samsung is only buying 2-3 million at a time. he who buys 5 times the parts you are is going to get a better price.
The funny thing is, Samsung makes some of these parts. Flash memory and displays (although maybe not tablet-sized displays).
Re:Anyone know...Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is very easy actually.
1) They have huge quantities of scale. While other manufacturers are making 100's of models, Apple focuses on a few. Easier to get great prices on millions of the same part, then to get prices on thousands of different parts with retooling in between.
2) That huge cash reserve? They are using it to hedge prices. For example they are pre-purchasing key components so that the manufacturer does not have to add in risk costs for unknown future prices. They are also sharing the cost of new manufacturing facilities as part of a contract to get better prices. Hard to compete when you can't buy components because they have bought up half the supply, leaving everyone else to fight over the other half.
3) The entire company is ran very lean, probably the biggest lean manufacturing company in existence. Since all their effort is very focused, they do not have the overhead that most other companies their size have. Check out their R & D spending versus sales. Incredible.
For those that think they are running razor thin margins to get iPad hardware sales to make it up on the back side, you do not know Apple very well. They make healthy margins on everything they do. They have even hinted that they could drop the prices on iPads if they need to and still make a lot of profit. They are a public company, check it their filings.
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
I do remember thinking that Apple simply had a glorified iPod touch. Then I tried one. Is the device "magical?" No. But it is a game changer, in more ways than people realize yet. I believe Apple has very big plans for this device, and the size of the case is just the tip of the iceberg.
Apple isn't hiding what they are doing. They are being very deliberate and open. In the iPad2 product release Jobs stated that they believe tech and art are not mutually exclusive. Their competitors are still all tech oriented. Even Google and Android is tech oriented. Most of the Apple haters here are still tech oriented and think that the art side just needs some flashy doo-dads and window transparency to come out on top. So it's not surprising to see so many people think that Android will blow the iPad out of the water.
Android tablets will come, but until companies realize that the consumer market really wants computing devices which don't feel like computing devices, they will simply be in a race to the bottom and Apple has already made it clear they aren't interesting in winning the race to the bottom. That said, their competitors need to keep in mind that as Apple's economies of scale get larger they will be pushing the bottom farther down.
It will be very interesting to see how the market responds. Windows on any clone isn't the target anymore. Now it's tight integration between excellent industrial design and user interface. I can't think of any company oriented to even start seriously competing and if Apple continues raising the bar every year like this then they will continue to lead the market space until someone can push the bar higher or until Apple brings a piece of crap to market.
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they don;t have to be as feature-full as the iPad to sell well. If sub-$100 tablets have a market, then more power to them.
My point was that people on slashdot have been saying since before the iPad came out that there would be cheaper, better specced Android tablets, pretty much every month they were "just around the corner". Then it was "just wait for Honeycomb!". We're still waiting. I think the hardware vendors, and the tech community in general really *were* astounded that the iPad is selling so well (one of the best tech product launches ever) , and they were expecting better specced tablets to come along at a lower price... and it just hasn't happened. Either the price is the same or more than the iPad, or it's compromised considerably to get the cost down.
I think the fundamental issue seems to be that they just can't make them much cheaper than the iPad already is, with the same featureset, without it being uneconomical to do, otherwise we would have seen it already - Honeycomb or no Honeycomb.
Re:Remember everyone saying iPad was overpriced? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)
They have? You mean I can buy a Blackberry tablet or an HP tablet now?
I think Apple is quite happy making 50% of the industry profit in cell phones compared to 14% for RIM.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/30/iphone-4-of-market-50-of-profit/ [cnn.com]
Or do you think that market share is more important to a publicly traded company than profit?