Quote:
Originally Posted by AustinChief
So wrong it's funny... tablets are not MP3 players... ok, actually they ARE right now.. a useful toy... but that is NOT the future. And more importantly none of the big manufacturers ever made any serious push to make MP3 players... it was a niche that had a too short of a window. MP3 players did not eat away at their sales... tablets eventually WILL and because of that, they are jumping in now.
Let's look at the ridiculous "Apple can get parts cheaper" argument... Do you honestly think an A5 will be cheaper than a Tegra2 (Tegra3 in the fall)? RIGHT NOW... the component cost of a Xoom and an iPad2 is almost identical. The iPad2's component cost will drop but not nearly as quickly as the Xoom's will.. mostly because more and more manufacturers will be using the same base components.
We are both "guessing" what the future holds... I am willing to BET that I am right on this...
If there is a $250 tablet with the same specs as the iPad3 out at this time next year... where do you think the market is headed? Do you think Apple will (or even CAN) match those prices?
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My point is, they won't. And nor do they have to. Since their gigantic turnaround, Apple has been Apple because they DON'T lower their prices. They decide what their product is gonna go for, and if you don't want to pay that price, fine. They do not care. Case in point, the 160 GB iPod classic has been 260 dollars Canadian for at least three years. The laptops haven't come down much if at all, ditto for the iMacs. The only reason the iPad is going down is because the 2 is coming out. And based on Apple's ability to get better performance/quality while using lesser-spec'd laptops, I'm sure they're gonna be fine. Will their market share decrease? Probably, but since they were running unopposed until now, that makes sense.
Maybe tablets are the future as far as computing, but based on the limitations of the current hardware, it's not likely that any of them have the capability to replace a computer full-stop; that's probably at least two to three versions away. For now, Tablets remain novelty items, and we'll see who does novelty best over the next year. Odds are, it's probably still Apple.