More Tablet Speculation: WiFi, Price, MacBook Instead?
The Wall Street Journal added a few more juicy rumors to the Apple Tablet speculation, namely a March ship date, WiFi subscription plan, and an analyst-suggested price around $1,000.
All more or less makes sense to me. Announce in January, but ship later was the case with the iPhone. Apple needs to pre-announce to get developers on board and conveniently subvert whatever is going on at CES, Google Android, and MacWorld (smart consumers will hold off buying anything tablet-like until Apple’s take actually ships).
A WiFi subscription makes sense, too. Never thought this product would have 3G (MacBooks and iPod Touches don’t). Certainly don’t want another contract with AT&T. No deal breaker there, either.
Price: This is a tough one. $1000 is on par with the cheapest MacBook, meaning an inevitable comparison. $800 — $900 for this tablet was the edge of my personal comfort level.
To me, this price point could mean several things:
- The tablet is closer in functionality to a MacBook than an iPod Touch. Maybe able to run productivity apps (Apple has “lite” tablet versions of the iLife and iWork apps) or (fingers crossed) a more MacBook-like version of OS X.
- The tablet has some crazy multitouch GUI functionality or killer feature that is just so cool and mind-blowing that it leaps ahead of how we currently interact with laptps, justifying the higher price.
- Apple intends to milk a few extra hundred out of the early, early adopters and drop the price soon after (something like this happened with the iPhone).
- Apple is pulling an under promise, over deliver. As TechCrunch’s MG Siegler suggests, now that $1,000 is floated, an Apple announcement of $800 come January will seem like a good deal.
- $1000 is an unsubsidized price: Apple hopes to line up a monthly WiFi provider, or: some monthly magazine, movie studio subscription package before March to defray the cost.
Personally, I have always had a price in my mind of $600 — $800, bracketed between the cheapest Mac Mini at the low end and the cheapest MacBook. Kind of a MacBook Mini.
But that said, it has been a general pattern that Apple always slaps an extra $100 — $200 to the price I feel comfortable with. That was the case with the MacBook Air, and I have been perpetually frustrated by Apple’s resistance to sell a sub $1,000 MacBook.
Hence: $1000 for the Apple Tablet would not be a surprise, but personally, at that price, it will take some reality-distorting, Jobsian convincing to keep me from ponying up for a MacBook instead.
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Yeah. I have to think that Apple will put it out there for under $1000. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but anything that is less than a full-blown laptop (which this thing will be, no matter how much whiz-bang it has) needs to cost less than a full-blown laptop. Otherwise, it really is a niche machine for people with money to burn.
Apple can always charge a premium over what other people charge for things, and the tablet will be more than any one item it gets compared to (netbook, Kindle, other Android Tablets), but all those things it will get compared to are selling in the $200-$300 range. For $1000, you can get four Kindles. It’s just a little too much of a premium. I have to think that the WSJ, which has had a lousy track record lately, is pulling numbers out of its butt as usual on this one.
The iPhone is competitively priced with other phones. The iPod has been reasonably priced for a long time now. I have to think that using their own custom PA Semi chips and their negotiating strength for Flash RAM prices, Apple can keep unit costs down enough. Plus, maybe they’ll figure out a way to subsidize it other than through AT&T. Maybe MobileMe will gain some killer new features that coincide with the tablet, and the yearly subscription to that can help them offset the tablet’s price tag? So $800 for non-MobileMe members, $600 for subscribers? Who knows? They do have that mysterious new server farm in South Carolina.
Price is the one area I’d be most cautious about predicting. Apple can literally change the pricing two days before the announcement, if they want to.
Heh. Could add another number to the list above “WSJ doesn’t have the right
number.” And MobileMe could definitely be another way to subsidize the
price. Just signed up for another year.
So I suppose it’s back to waiting. Really hard to know if $1000 is the right
price for something we don’t even know the features of.