Apple’s Premium Features Are Free
Heard any good nichization-of-Apple fantasies lately? They typically go like this:
The iPad’s a really slick, premium product. It’s got this smooth, aluminum back. It runs a really pretty, polished OS. It’s got this App Store full of thousands of great, third-party apps.
But what if someone made a similar tablet — same size, same basic functionality — but instead of Apple’s sleek industrial design, it had a quick-and-dirty design, with a plastic back. And it had an OS, of course, but not such a nice, polished one. And it ran some apps, but not the great variety of apps available on the iPad. It would be a non-premium, ho-hum kinda product compared to the iPad. But it would still be plenty usable.
And if it sold for, say, half the price of an iPad, then a lot of people would buy one. And when a lot of people have them, then a lot of software developers will start writing apps for them. And then Apple will wind up in the same niche position it was with the Mac in the 1980s and ’90s in the face of cheap Windows PCs.
Enjoy the ride while it lasts, Apple. Because your dark days are about to return.
Right?
No. Not right.
Did you spot the key error in the story? It’s this part: “if it sold for, say, half the price of an iPad”
The slick aluminum backing isn’t a significant part of the per-unit cost of an iPad. Neither is iOS. Neither is the App Store and all its apps.
The per-unit cost of an iPad is: The 10" capacitive touchscreen. And the flash memory storage. And the RAM. And the processor. And the battery. And the cost of assembling all these parts into a high-yield, low-return-rate, functional product.
Guess what? The above-described iPad knock-off has to have all those same things. So it’ll cost just as much. And if Apple commands tremendous economy of scale (which it does), and has tremendous buying power to lock in the lowest part prices (which it does), then we can expect an iPad wannabe to perhaps cost more than an iPad.
And, in fact, the first 10" iPad wannabe — the Motorola XOOM — is looking like it’s gonna come in at a little more expensive than the iPad. And that’s the current (i.e. year-old) iPad I’m talking about. Who knows what that iPad will cost when the new iPad comes out in, oh, about a week from now?
Premium Features
The features that make the iPad a really premium product — it’s aluminum back, iOS, and App Store — are effectively free. Apple has taken the things any tablet must have to be at all functional, and added to that a premium body, premium OS, and premium App Store, at virtually no extra charge. Just to get people to want their product, and not somebody else’s.
Without the “half the price of an iPad” element, the nichization-of-Apple scenario simply doesn’t work. Which means it simply won’t happen.
Apple’s dark days are gone. Get over it.
© 2012 Darel Rex Finley | design by 