Did Steve Jobs Pick the Wrong Tablet Size? 433
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the nobody's-perfect dept.
from the nobody's-perfect dept.
An anonymous reader writes "During the 2010 Christmas shopping season, Steve Jobs famously dissed the 7-inch tablets being rolled out by competitors, including Samsung's Galaxy, as being 'tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the [9.7-inch diagonal] iPad,' adding that 'the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.' A year later Jobs was dead, and the iPad Mini, with a 7.9-inch diagonal screen, was rolled out under his successor Tim Cook in October, 2012. Looking at industry-wide tablet sales numbers for January 2013, which show that the iPad Mini surprisingly outsold its larger sibling by a substantial margin (as did 7-inch Android tablets from competitors), Motley Fool's Evan Niu thinks that the 7.9-inch form factor was the correct size all along, contrary to Jobs' pronouncements (which, of course, was partly marketing bluster — but he chose the larger size in the first place). Of course the Mini is cheaper, but not by much — $329 vs. $399 for the larger iPad, for the baseline model with WiFi only and 16GB storage. Had Apple introduced the iPad with the smaller size to begin with, Niu argues, competitors would have faced a much more difficult task grabbing market share. While the Mini is currently available only with 'Super VGA' resolution (1024x768), rumors are afloat that Minis with the Retina display (2048x1536) are close to production."
Re:Public vs. inside information (Score:4, Informative)
Except apple has grown under Tim Cook and they're making record profits.
Other than that you're completely right
Re:Public vs. inside information (Score:2, Informative)
The investors figured it out, and that's why they're trying to get to the money fast, Tim Cook isn't up to it, and they know it.
And yet Apple's share price is still higher than when Jobs died. And higher still than when he retired. The facts don't fit with your rhetoric.
Re:Size might not matter... (Score:5, Informative)
It's true, though. The Nexus 7 fits into the back pocket of a pair of Levi's 501s, though it's a little too long to be comfortable. It will also fit into the inside pocket of a lot of jackets, but it's a bit heavy to carry there.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:4, Informative)
My first mp3 player was as iAudio M5. The iPod was a far superior product. Heck it was superior to the X5.
Many makers of mp3 players didn't get that to have 20/30/40GB of music you needed to browse it fast, yet accurately. None touched the scroll wheel in ease of use.
None also touched the infrastructure that Apple built around the iPod. iTunes was a big deal, and other companies just didn't care to build something like that to go with the music.