Massive Oversupply of Android Tablets May Result In Excess Inventory

[DukeEsquire]

So two things,

1) Are you sure that those iPad apps are exclusive to iPads only as I said above.

2) How did you check the Honeycomb store because as a Xoom owner I am not aware of a Honeycomb Store. I am aware of a section for featured tablet apps but guess what... that list only includes 25 apps, it's not a comprehensive list.

As for your estimate... it's pretty much laughable.

1. They are exclusive as in they only work on the iPad. I don't think there is a way to separate universal apps (Apps where if you buy it, you get the iPad version and the iPhone version and those apps that only have an iPad version). If I could get a HC native Facebook app for example, that would be great. Using the current version designed with the phone in mind sucks. The font is tiny and there is so much wasted screen space.

I just want native apps on my Transformer. I don't care if they are exclusive to the tablet or not, I just want apps that work.

2. You can search for HC native apps. That's what I was referring to.

[.Neo]

When it comes to overall quality, price and app support I have yet to see a tablet that truly competes with the iPad 2.

[Unix2]

This is why Android tables are piece of crap. I owned one with 2.2 and this crap crashed and freeze more often that I can use it. I sold this crap and I bought an iPad 1. The iPad never crash or freeze on me, I surf the web, check e-mail, watch youtube and does not need to restart or shut down when I am done with it. I mean this is what a tablet device is suppose to do.

[DukeEsquire]

When it comes to overall quality, price and app support I have yet to see an tablet that truly competes with the iPad 2.

I'm sadly coming to that conclusion. It's my fault really. Should have done more research on the app ecosystem.

I love my Transformer hardware, but the app support stinks. Utterly stinks. When I first got my Transformer, my girlfriend said, "Show me a cool app!"

And I came up with...zlich.

iOS has so many cool apps from iWorks to Garageband to to Netflix to Command and Conquer...bleh...

[Rudy]

it is!

yet the iPad is cheaper than most Android tablets :rolleyes:

[.Neo]

I for one I'm extremely glad with my iPad 2. Won't trade it in for anything else currently on the market.

[spudtrooper]

Price & functionality..

It doesn't do anything more than my phone could and it does far less than a similarly priced desktop or notebook can.

Not to mention wireless 4g/3g access is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYyy to expensive leaving you with a nice portable device stuck at home or coffee shops where the form factor isn't worth paying a premium for.

[DukeEsquire]

Price & functionality..

It doesn't do anything more than my phone could and it does far less than a similarly priced desktop or notebook can.

Not to mention wireless 4g/3g access is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYyy to expensive leaving you with a nice portable device stuck at home or coffee shops where the form factor isn't worth paying a premium for.

Does your phone play movies on a 10 inch screen? Does your laptop/notebook weigh 1.5 pounds?

That's already one thing a tablet can do that neither your phone nor your laptop can do.

It's all personal preference. I wanted a tablet because it is super light and can do 80% of what a laptop can do.

[Rudy]

Price & functionality..

It doesn't do anything more than my phone could and it does far less than a similarly priced desktop or notebook can.

Not to mention wireless 4g/3g access is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYyy to expensive leaving you with a nice portable device stuck at home or coffee shops where the form factor isn't worth paying a premium for.

2 completely different markets. Yes it can do stuff your phone can't and your computer can probably do things tablets can't.... but that's not the point :wacko:

[Vice]

The only one I can even fathom buying would be the HTC Flyer - I don't care whether it comes with honeycomb or not, the fact that you can get a digital pen, with fully integrated software for it instantly makes it beat nearly every other tablet in usefulness.

But then it all falls down to price again >.< ?599? Go eat yourself. I guess Apple have an advantage, they can afford to make much slimmer profit margins on their devices than other manufacturers - seeing as they can make it back through app store sales. No Android manufacturer has that luxury, and it makes it nearly impossible to compete without making it completely not worth their while.

So I'm all for this to happen, would love to pick up a Flyer for something nicer like ?299 :p And I can see it happening too... bad for them, but good for us.

Apples profit margins on the physical hardware of an iPad is still about 55%. The reason that Apple is able to price them so well is due in part to them being the biggest buyer of touch screen displays, NAND Flash, microphones and speakers, small video cameras, accelerometers and so on. Apple has also managed to lock in multi-year deals where they pay 3 Billion dollars upfront for these components (among others) without being affected by price fluctuations or supply constraints. In short they have cornered the market in all the components everyone needs and they are getting them at lower prices with guaranteed shipping dates.

For once Apple is strangely the cheaper alternative :laugh:

[DukeEsquire]

Apples profit margins on the physical hardware of an iPad is still about 55%. The reason that Apple is able to price them so well is due in part to them being the biggest buyer of touch screen displays, NAND Flash, microphones and speakers, small video cameras, accelerometers and so on. Apple has also managed to lock in multi-year deals where they pay 3 Billion dollars upfront for these components (among others) without being affected by price fluctuations or supply constraints. In short they have cornered the market in all the components everyone needs and they are getting them at lower prices with guaranteed shipping dates.

For once Apple is strangely the cheaper alternative :laugh:

That 55% number is meaningless because the vast majority of the cost of an iPad to Apple is R&D, Marketing, labor...etc.

That's like saying the profit margin on the physical hardware of an App is 100%. It may be true, but it is meaningless.

[Flawed]

If I get one, it's likely to be a Windows 7 one, despite W7 not being best suited for tablets. At least then I won't be limited on how I can use it.

But you will be. If it's running on an ARM processor, none of the existing software will work on it. You think all your favourite apps will run without modification/recompilation? And all that takes time and resources.

In addition, 7/8 is much more demanding spec wise than Android or iOS, so if you think the current tablets are expensive, just wait for Microsoft's version to arrive.

[Vice]

That 55% number is meaningless because the vast majority of the cost of an iPad to Apple is R&D, Marketing, labor...etc.

That's like saying the profit margin on the physical hardware of an App is 100%. It may be true, but it is meaningless.

He made the remark that the iPad had a slim margin per unit. I corrected that. And no it isn't meaningless like you so claim. Margins are very important in business if you want to make money back at all and if your margins are too high you may price your product out of the market. Do you wan't to go for Volume and make your money back by selling very much of a device or do you want to increase your margins to recoup research and development costs faster but at the cost of market share.

Take for example the Playstation 3. Sony chose to actually sell them at a loss and to gain market share very quickly and then over time make it profitable. Had the PS3 cost to much to begin with it may never have gained traction with consumers so it was necessary to price it right against the 360 for it to have a future at all.

Margins are very important and meaningful.

[HoochieMamma]

But you will be. If it's running on an ARM processor, none of the existing software will work on it. You think all your favourite apps will run without modification/recompilation? And all that takes time and resources.

In addition, 7/8 is much more demanding spec wise than Android or iOS, so if you think the current tablets are expensive, just wait for Microsoft's version to arrive.

Who's saying anything about ARM?

http://www.samsung.com/us/news/newsRead.do?news_seq=19779

This is what I would get if I wanted a tablet.

[smooth_criminal1990]

Has noone heard of the Archos 70? Runs Android 2.x, has ridiculous battery life, and costs around ?300 IIRC.

But for my own ends, useless.

[DukeEsquire]

He made the remark that the iPad had a slim margin per unit. I corrected that. And no it isn't meaningless like you so claim. Margins are very important in business if you want to make money back at all and if your margins are too high you may price your product out of the market. Do you wan't to go for Volume and make your money back by selling very much of a device or do you want to increase your margins to recoup research and development costs faster but at the cost of market share.

Take for example the Playstation 3. Sony chose to actually sell them at a loss and to gain market share very quickly and then over time make it profitable. Had the PS3 cost to much to begin with it may never have gained traction with consumers so it was necessary to price it right against the 360 for it to have a future at all.

Margins are very important and meaningful.

Margin obviously matters.

However, looking purely at hardware margins is meaningless. You need to look at the overall profit margins, not a tear-down cost estimate.

[Vice]

Margin obviously matters.

However, looking purely at hardware margins is meaningless. You need to look at the overall profit margins, not a tear-down cost estimate.

Which is something that is impossible to know because we do not know how much Apple pays Foxconn to make them, how much they spent developing any of the technology or how much they budget on advertising. We can only guess, surmise. We guess that Foxconn charges about $9.80 to build each iPad and that is all we know outside of the cost of the individual components but even that is an educated guess because we don't know what prices Apple has been able to negotiate with their large bulk buys of components.

And again I was simply correcting another user who said Apples margins on the iPad were small when they are actually 55%. You're really showing your lawyer skills on here with your nitpicking no wonder so many people hate lawyers.

[DukeEsquire]

Which is something that is impossible to know because we do not know how much Apple pays Foxconn to make them, how much they spent developing any of the technology or how much they budget on advertising. We can only guess, surmise. We guess that Foxconn charges about $9.80 to build each iPad and that is all we know outside of the cost of the individual components but even that is an educated guess because we don't know what prices Apple has been able to negotiate with their large bulk buys of components.

And again I was simply correcting another user who said Apples margins on the iPad were small when they are actually 55%. You're really showing your lawyer skills on here with your nitpicking no wonder so many people hate lawyers.

Apple's profit margins are about 25%.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7467076.html

Their HARDWARE profit margin is about 55% which, again, is meaningless.

25% v. 55% is a huge difference. Sorry for "nitpicking" though. After all, you were only off by a magnitude! :laugh:

BTW: That's the engineer side of me making fun of you, not the lawyer. My lawyer side doesn't like math.

[Vice]

Apple's profit margins are about 25%.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7467076.html

Their HARDWARE profit margin is about 55% which, again, is meaningless.

25% v. 55% is a huge difference. Sorry for "nitpicking" though. After all, you were only off by a magnitude! :laugh:

BTW: That's the engineer side of me making fun of you, not the lawyer. My lawyer side doesn't like math.

[Citation Needed] that site doesn't even list a source for their 25% except "according to an estimate by Toni Sacconaghi" who? :laugh:

I see you changed your signature I must have touched a nerve :whistle:

[alexalex]

That's sort of irrelevant. There are't many iPad apps either. Most apps work for both the phone and the tablets.

There are more than 60,000 apps tailored for the iPad.

[zombieChan]

But you will be. If it's running on an ARM processor, none of the existing software will work on it. You think all your favourite apps will run without modification/recompilation? And all that takes time and resources.

In addition, 7/8 is much more demanding spec wise than Android or iOS, so if you think the current tablets are expensive, just wait for Microsoft's version to arrive.

I'm perfectly fine with an x86 tablet that runs WIndows 7

I have a friend how uses one of those to draw her stuff, and she doesn't want to use a limited OS like iOS and Android. These Window tablets also are much cheaper than those ipads and android tablets.

[SirEvan]

Pricing really kills it. I think 800 was the price. Thats close enough to the Macbook, which starts at $999.00. So yea buying a xoom to me not practical.

Xoom is 599.

[nubs]

Yes.

In the App Store, they specifically list an app as "iPad." That means it was developed for the iPad. So quite often there are 2 versions of an app. The iPad version and the regular iPod or iPhone version.

So if it says iPad, it means just that, full screen, and developed for the iPad.

That's what I'm getting at. If a developer is forced to develop two sets of code for the iPhone and the iPad but delivers the exact same experience, why does it matter that there are 80K apps for the iPad? Then you have people coming and making ignorant claims there are only a handful of apps that run on Honeycomb, but the reality is that most of the Android app market apps run on Honeycomb but there are only a handful that only work on Honeycomb. Instead of a fragmented development environment between Honeycomb and Gingerbread, you have people making their apps work for both with one set of code.

1. They are exclusive as in they only work on the iPad. I don't think there is a way to separate universal apps (Apps where if you buy it, you get the iPad version and the iPhone version and those apps that only have an iPad version). If I could get a HC native Facebook app for example, that would be great. Using the current version designed with the phone in mind sucks. The font is tiny and there is so much wasted screen space.

I just want native apps on my Transformer. I don't care if they are exclusive to the tablet or not, I just want apps that work.

2. You can search for HC native apps. That's what I was referring to.

I don't think you can search for native tablet apps, what you can search for are apps that are compatible with your device but you should know that it's possible apps are not listed as compatible with your device simply because the kernel you are running is not registered as a valid OS yet. This happened when the Xoom was first released. Over the next few weeks more and more apps became available as the Market updated the compatibility.

[nubs]

This is why Android tables are piece of crap. I owned one with 2.2 and this crap crashed and freeze more often that I can use it. I sold this crap and I bought an iPad 1. The iPad never crash or freeze on me, I surf the web, check e-mail, watch youtube and does not need to restart or shut down when I am done with it. I mean this is what a tablet device is suppose to do.

Versions below Android 3 were never meant to be tablet software. But just because you owned a tablet that sucked doesn't mean they all suck. It's like saying because you owned an HP that all PC suck. It's simply not true. My wife has a NookColor and that is probably the best tablet available for the price. It's $250 and you can easily upgrade the OS to Cyanogen 7. Cyanogen never freezes, allows you to surf the web, check email, watch Youtube, and more. You had one bad experience and you probably did no research before you purchased your POS tablet.

I admit that is a major difference between an iPad owner and an Android owner. The entire apple ecosystem is controlled, and the opposite is true for Android. Therein lies the difference, as an Apple owner you can be completely ignorant and not have to worry about making a bad decision, whereas with Android your mistakes can make your Android experience a bad one.

[Unix2]

Versions below Android 3 were never meant to be tablet software. But just because you owned a tablet that sucked doesn't mean they all suck. It's like saying because you owned an HP that all PC suck. It's simply not true. My wife has a NookColor and that is probably the best tablet available for the price. It's $250 and you can easily upgrade the OS to Cyanogen 7. Cyanogen never freezes, allows you to surf the web, check email, watch Youtube, and more. You had one bad experience and you probably did no research before you purchased your POS tablet.

I admit that is a major difference between an iPad owner and an Android owner. The entire apple ecosystem is controlled, and the opposite is true for Android. Therein lies the difference, as an Apple owner you can be completely ignorant and not have to worry about making a bad decision, whereas with Android your mistakes can make your Android experience a bad one.

I am not saying that all Android tablets sucks. I owned one of the suppose to be good ones out there before Honeycomb which was an Archos 70. I am not stupid, I read reviews before I bought it. In amazon they have a positive review of 4.5 out of 5.0 which you know, sounds attractive for an Android 2.2 OS.

Well, the honeymoon didn't last long, after a few uses with this tablet, started to froze on me, which ****ed me out. After so many need to restarts and freeze, I can't hold this anymore. This does not mean Android sucks, but Android 2 OS in a tablet was the worst software ever in a tablet.