- Monday, 9 November 2009
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America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up - Oscar Wilde
Apple could rake in cash with cut-price Ibook
AN ANALYST HAS WARNED that Apple needs to swallow its pride and make a product that ordinary people can afford.
Brian Marshall, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech said that Apple could make a $600 notebook and clean up.
He warned that people will be abandoning Apple Macs in droves as punters realise that they have better things to waste their money on. Marshall said that no one was interested in the high price computer market any more and Apple was snubbing the only fast growing PC segment.
He added that, if Jobs swallowed his pride, he could create a netbook with a 10.1-in. screen and a 16GB solid-state drive, perhaps powered by an ARM processor designed by PA Semi.
This is more or less the same spec as HP's Mini 1000 netbook which costs about $400.
If Apple did its traditional trick of taking the price of a standard PC spec, jacking it into a nice-looking case and then nearly doubling the price then Apple could make about $600.
That price would also save Steve the embarrassment of saying that Apple could not make a $500 computer that was not a piece of junk. Of course it would be a $400 computer being sold for $600 but fanboys will still think that it is a good deal.
The price difference of $600 would still be better than the least-expensive MacBook, Marshall said. This will become even more important when Apple dumps its $1000 macbook in favour of the absurdly optimistically priced "unibody" MacBooks which start at $1,300.
Marshall said that Apple could sell a netbook at $600 and still make a profit of 35 per cent to 40 per cent on each unit, a range that matches the 35 per cent margin Apple had in the quarter that ended in December. µ
L'Inq
Computerworld
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Please.
Just put in a link to the original article, and write stuff about Playmobil figures, instead.
This is old news.
They should not release a netbook at it will cut into the sales of everything they have. Especially the over priced bricks with no keyboard. Can you imagine how much money they are saving by not putting keyboards? Steve was probly thinking, how can we make them cheaper. O yeah no keyboard! software doesn't cost as much to implement, brilliant. But people are going to notice it doesnt hae a keyboard, we will just say its kewl like that.
Pwnage
I think Apple is planning something for that price range, but my prediction is the tablet that we keep hearing about.
sales of the macbook air would plummet and apple would have to concede portability doesn't equal thinness, overall size does.
$600 for a stylish PDA? No Thanks... Why are such idiots regarded as experts.
and when I think about it someone should start selling iBrains for these idiots
Please no! Apple's 'Apple Tax' is one of the things that makes the Mac so appealing . . . the blissfully ignorant user which has essentially destroyed the Windows OS (limewire gives me viruses dude? . . . no way!) doesn't see a need to drop $1500 on a Mac, so they keep buying the $400 PC laptops which has removed the necessity of 'quality' from the Windows market which Apple has still be able to hold onto.
Keep Mac's expensive . . . Apple will still sit tight with 10-20% market share, Steve Jobs will be still be rich and the Mac users still happy. Everyone wins!
--Garrett
Nick, we all realize you need to slant the article, but could you at least try to be more subtle about it. If one 'almost doubles' the price of a $400 product... the new price would be A) $400, B)$600, C)$750, D)$800, E) whatever Nick needs it to be to put Apple in the worst possible light.
If you tried a little less hard to slant the articles, they may actually be a better read and people may actually listen to what you are saying and the points you are trying to make. I guess you have too much pride to come close to playing it as it lies as that sometimes might risk an occasional positive interpretation of Apple?
And again... INQ/Editors - you are (should be?) better this.
why would they dump the white macbook that costs 999, if they recently updated its hardware to match the unibody ones (nvidia chipset and video, etc)
...and bought my wife an iMac for her birthday. I go to our local Apple store all the time to buy computer kit for my PCs and since its close I don't mind paying the premium Apple charges for everything.
One of the reasons Apple gives for its' higher prices is the personalized and expert service their sales teams provide. I don't know about other places but our Apple shop has horrible service and the sales staff knows next to nothing about computers including Apple computers.....so goodbye the myth that we pay for good service.
I had to choose between a Sony AIO computer or the iMac...basically the two are the same except with Apple I can run both Vista and Leopard so Apple was the better choice and I'm not complaining about the machine but the prices they charged me for upgrading was ridiculous.
I think Apple should and will follow the same market plan as most other "luxury companies" have been forced to adopt. Look at the new small A and B class Mercedes. They are for people who will overpay a little to own a Mercedes but who can't or won't pay for a real Benz.
Oh look, another talentless analyst with an agenda. ARM's only advantage is that it's low power, which is rarely the largest contributer to overall system power.
I'm sure it makes vast amounts of sense to choose ARM over Atom, Celeron or Via. Then 'all' you have to do is port to and support OS X on a third processor architecture, just as Apple is gearing up to drop PPC completely.
Utter and complete muppet.
Shame on you too Nick, for this blatant cut and paste of a press release.
The conversion of OSX to Intel hardware was the "OH S@%!" backup plan the true brethren refused to believe until it happened. Now we're a few years past that.......I say it's time for Apple to drop the "We're a hardware company" faux pas and just make OSX as an OS for Intel processors.
The time is past ripe, the brethren would still scream it would destroy Apple, although Microsoft seems to have done pretty well at making just an OS.
The brethren would also shriek that Microsoft would not hesitate to bury Apple, but I say let's go ahead and have the long pending battle of Evil versus Style and get it over with. If Apple is so great let's put it to the test. I'll sell tickets.
The other side of the coin is the brethren are few and far between these days, it's been many a moon since I got into it with a shrill wannabe hippie who thought sitting in front of a Powermac would change the world. The market has changed, the Ipod craze is fading, let's roll the wheel and give us OSX for the masses!