September is apparently going herald the arrival of the iPad mini, a seven-inch tablet. I’ve been ignoring it in the hopes that it’ll go away, but apparently, it’s not going to. It’s really going to happen. Here’s why it’s a bad idea: Apple, for the first time in a long time, is going to lose.
Yes, Apple turned the tablet computer from a nerd pipe to a viable PC market. And the iPad sells like meth. But the seven-inch tablet market is not the tablet market of… geez, two years ago? Goddamn.
Anyway. The tablet market has changed. In the ten-inch space, Apple dominates because ten-inch tablets that aren’t the iPad are generally awful. That’s what happens when you step into an ill-treated market and turn it around.
The seven-inch form factor, on the other hand, has not one, not two, but three competitors that can scrap with a tinier iPad. Amazon has the Kindle Fire, with the Kindle Fire 2 coming probably within a few weeks. Barnes and Noble has the Nook tablet. And Google has the Nexus 7.
There’s simply no way the iPad mini can compete in this market. Not least because there’s no way Apple is going to turn out an iPad with the sheer raw power of the Nexus 7. And it’d be different if the Nexus 7 were just a crappy Android tablet, but it’s not. It’s just as usable and user-friendly as the iPad… and it’ll likely be $100 cheaper.
So basically Apple is going to make a crappier tablet and charge more for it because of the logo on the back. Granted that this has been Apple’s strategy for years when it comes to PCs. But it’s hard to see it working this time.
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Hey Dan… slightly OT here but I’d love to see you do a write-up/review of the cheap tablet market. You seem to be able to break things down for us non-tech heads and give a trustworthy report of whether they are worth it or not.
For reference, I’m talking about the $50 to $150 Androids that, apparently, ship from Asia, etc…
Honestly? Buy a Nexus 7. Spend the extra $50. It’s got the fastest chip and the most up-to-date OS.
Cook has said he doesn’t want to leave either a product or price umbrella. And there’s a real sweet spot there in the $200-300 tablet space for Apple. The still newish 7 inch market place just now has reasonable contenders in the Nexus 7 and we’re probably going to see a Kindle Fire 2 announced next week, I think a 7.85″ iPad could be really nice. It would be impossible to see Apple taking zero margins on the iPad Jr. but they could probably clean up with a $250 8 gig model.
Certainly the iPad mini/Jr./Air can compete, aside from kindle it’s the only one that has any brand recognition in a store and that “iPad” is synonymous with tablet computer that’s the one everyone’s going to ask for by name. Apple with announce this thing in early October (not at the September iPhone event) and then they’re going to carpet bomb us with TV ad and they’re going to be supply constrained for months. It will be the must have toy at Christmas. If they can make it good, and there’s no reason to think they can’t, they’re going to make it and I think it’s going to be really nice. I’ll be sticking with my regular iPad but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it being the best selling one by a large margin.
It can compete but I’m worried about Apple selling a product based on name. It’s a bad habit. Even Jobs, who leaned on it, realized this.
With the general belief is that the 7 inch iPad will have the same aspect ratio and resolution as the iPad 2 making existing iPad apps compatible out of the box is huge. They’re competing on name, product, ecosystem. For as nice as the hardware of the Nexus 7 is the tablet app environment isn’t close to that of Apple’s.
I held put for years until I finally shelled out for the 16gb Nexus 7 and I couldn’t be happier with it. It’s lightning fast and really responsive. Holding out for this was a smart decision .
Same. The 7 inch tablet fits perfectly in one hand and does everything I’m looking for a tablet to do. Not to mention the battery life is pretty great.
“there’s no way Apple is going to turn out an iPad with the sheer raw power of the Nexus 7″
Really? You’re showing your lack of mobile processor knowledge. The GPU Apple uses in its line of mobile processors, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and 3, is faster than the Tegra 3 chip used in the Nexus line. The close to two year old A5 dualcore used in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 and 3 is clocked at 1GHz and more than keeps up with the 1.2GHz quadcore in the Nexus 7. The multitasking system of each OS plays a factor into it as well. Android basically needs more hardware thrown at it to be as smooth as iOS since a ton of UI processing on iOS is handled by the GPU.
[www.ibtimes.co.uk]
Also it has been rumored that Apple is working on an A6 quad core processor line for a while now. If I had to guess that’ll be coming soon.
I’m aware of the bench tests. Bench tests do not reflect day-to-day reality. I’m not saying the iPad is crap, but the Nexus 7 is, in my experience, just slightly faster.
Slightly faster with double the cores running at faster speeds is damning praise to me.
The problem is that I don’t think they’re going to stuff a faster chip in this thing. In fact I’ll be shocked if this isn’t just a shrunk screen.
Dan, if you don’t like the idea of an iPad Mini then don’t buy it and at least wait till it’s released before you trash it.