Updates to this story
A gaggle of carefully selected fanbois is packing the halls for Apple’s launch of the iPad this evening.
We are not invited – neither will be the INQster nor the Rogister – after all you don’t want hacks asking awkward questions, do you? Lawyers and fashion designers are invited – you get the picture.
We once got invited to one at the INQster by mistake – we met the Apple guy at the end of the gig. He said: “You shouldn’t be here!” Oh well. I was at an Apple gig in 1990 or so when Douglas Adams endorsed one of its products and got slipped quite a big DRAM upgrade by the PR. Apple products have always been quite expensive. Steve at the Palladium launching the NeXT box was very haughty at the time. He said then it was a better Apple than an Apple.
Steve Jobs is making an appearance for the launch of the iPad II – we dunno if Jonny Ive is there....
Jobs started off by describing Android tablets as the year of the copycats – a bold prediction, for sure. The iPad II is the third of Apple’s attempts to crush the PC opposition. It won’t be Jobs’ first attempt. The British event is being held at the BBC TV Centre, a cluster of fanbois – but the poor hacks that work there do, we think use Dell. Apple loves the BBC but not as much as Apple loves News International.
The iPad II uses the A5 chip as predicted – it’s a dual processor ARM based chip – it will come with cameras and it’s a third thinner than the iPad I – it will comfortably fit in your pocket if you have a big pocket. Reliable sources tell TechEye that Apple is very stingy on discounts – for example buying 26,000 iPad Is will only get you a 10 percent discount. And employees of Apple have to pay almost the full price too – and can’t even buy it if there’s too much demand.
The 16GB version will cost $499 – that’s $500 folks – this is Draper’s Disease – and you’ll be able to buy one in Blighty at the end of March. So don’t go buying any old iPads, u fule. This one is lighter and you can get it in white, if you want white.
Jobs. He’s got one. But if I was him, I'd be getting a lot of rest and lounging on a beach somewhere rather than banging on about a bloody gadget.
Data Monitor analysts reckon that Google Honeycomb will look as good as and have as many apps as Apple’s iPad. But it is pessimistic about how fast Android tablets will catch up with Apple tablets. It is sort of thinking that might happen in 2015, with Google having 10 percent of the market in 2010 – and Apple 90 percent.
It will all be about the BOM (bill o’materials), we think at TechEye. The other vendors can’t price up their offerings to match the non Jonny Ive versions. There will be a price war, whether Apple likes it or likes it not...
Steve gained weight, as seen in photo. Is Ham on Cheese legal, Eye ask kew.
Bucconeers is Slang form of Baconizers. from prirate days of Yore,arrrr, As Wild huvel oinks where common life, world wide in tropics. Now Toasting iPad2 may be just as illict,arrrgh, yet: to All Fanbois':
Wanna Smoke Bar....common radical statement.
vondrashek , hand me down my iPad2. lite 'Er Up, Smell Glory of ?Burnt Cells. Oink,Oink. Like that on Swiss....
I don't believe the P/E for ARM.L. Shouldn't that be more like 95? Are you mixing up US and UK data somehow?
According to Google Finance
Company name Price P/E
ARM Holdings plc (ADR) 29.48 94.90
ARM Holdings plc 604.13 94.43
Your ARM Price: ~600
Your ARM P/E: ~3104
Actual P/E: ~95
3104/95 = 33, which is close to the ARM (ADR) price of 30.
who is more sad... fanboys or the other group
maybe it's just humankind..
I'm afraid my knowledge of this area is somewhat limited - but let me know if something still looks off? (or if we're using the wrong data!)
Thanks
Actually Apple priced the IPad to win a price war. If you add up the BOM, and take into account Apple's economy of scale, they'll be making more money per unit than everyone else, especially since they've screwed Foxcon out of every last penny.
And it's the last that will come to haunt them. Foxcon doesn't have the money to expand fast, because Apple pays as little as possible. If orders for the IPad 2 are as high as I suspect, Apple won't be able to keep up, which will allow Android to take a significant share of the market.
It should be interesting.
Interesting point - it's a shame Foxconn is almost completely unreachable for comment, though it's unlikely they'd discuss that anyway.
What I find remarkable is that with the next generation of the iPad, its high profile rivals, running on Honeycomb, will be significantly more expensive! Quite a contrast from the mobile market where Android has managed to cement a favourable and comparably cheaper position compared to Jobs' "luxury" products.
If you check out my article on the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, I did a comparison on prices for a lot of Apple kit, and it's the same price as everyone else's kit, if you are careful and compare similar products. I actually predicted the IPad's base price of $500.00 when everyone was saying it would be $1000.00, based on a study of Apple product pricing.
One of the points that everyone forgets is that Steve Jobs wanted to bring the Apple Mac in cheap to keep competitors out of the market, but his Pepsi boss wouldn't let him price it the way he wanted.
You might also want to look at my Tablet Wars articles, about 7K words worth of research. My conclusion is that Microsoft started working on Windows for ARM in the summer of 2009. This is based on information from Mary Jo Foley and Charlie Demerjian. Now admittedly I could be adding 2+2 and getting 6, but I don't think so.
Wayne