Apple wants its Tablet in every home – which seems a little over-optimistic
The Apple Tablet will be unveiled at a special media event on Jan. 27. And Apple has big hopes for its new product, reportedly envisioning every home to have one. That would seem a little over-optimistic to me. It’s not even guaranteed that the general population will take to the new breed of tablets PCs and even if they do, Apple will be facing considerable competition.
We’re now less than a week away from the Apple Tablet, likely to be named the iPad, and not the iSlate as previously reported, being unveiled. And about time too. I grew sick of reading non-reports and speculation over the holidays about this product that no one was actually sure even existed.
Now, we are. The Apple Tablet is definitely real, and will definitely be revealed by Steve Jobs at the media event “to see our latest creation” Apple has planned for Jan. 27. Only then will the design, features, and pricing become known, and it’s at this moment we’ll be able to properly judge whether the iPad will change the world in the same way the iPod did, or whether it’ll be a white elephant that fails to sell and fails to live up to the hype.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple sees the Tablet becoming a key element in homes and in schools. It envisions every member of a family using the device on a daily basis. Apple is also seeking deals with content owners and publishers in order to make the Tablet the exclusive home of a range of media.
ChangeWave recently conducted a survey of more than 3000 people, asking them how likely they would be to buy an Apple Tablet. Four percent stated they were “very likely”, with a further 14 percent stating they were “somewhat likely”. That seems like a piddling amount, and not anywhere near enough to make Apple’s dream a reality. However, seeing as we’re still talking about a product no one outside of Apple has seen or used, it isn’t actually that bad.
I think the key thing is going to be price. If Apple sticks to form and overprices the Tablet at anything approaching $1,000, then it will likely never go mainstream. If it surprises everyone and pegs it as an everyday consumer product to be priced at around $500 then these will fly off the shelves.
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January 22nd, 2010
well I personally wouldn’t be buying it, no matter how cheap it is. If I wanted a tablet pc I would have gone for and Archos 9 several months ago.
January 22nd, 2010
Go to PC World and look this up
Freescale Semiconductor on Monday showcased reference designs of an affordable, lightweight tablet computer.
The price will be $199.
The question is, can Apple compete with the Freescale tablet at this price?
January 22nd, 2010
If 4% of the general public in the US want an iPad that number comes to over 1.2 million. And that’s just the 4% that is very likely. What of the other 14% that are somewhat likely?
Piddling amount?
And didn’t Bill Gates make a similar prediction some 25 years ago regarding the PC?
January 22nd, 2010
Wouldn´t the 4% of 300 millions be 12 millions?
January 22nd, 2010
Why wouldn’t Apple want one in every home? If you have a business, you don’t want to think small. You want to deliver your product to as many people as you can. If you sold anything, I guess you would never expand your business into a franchise. What’s wrong with aiming for a large segment of the population? Would it be optimistic for Sony to want a Playstation 3 in every household. An Apple tablet that can do many different tasks and possibly more than a Playstation certainly isn’t a stretch.
I saw the FS reference design and I call BS on a $200 full-media tablet. No way, no how. You can’t even buy a high-end smartphone for that price and usually a subsidized one isn’t that cheap. You must really think companies in the business not to make money, but to give things away for a loss. That’s an insane business model.