> 1. Smartphones are (in the U.S. and Europe) sold subsidized by > carriers with multi-year contracts where the carriers pick which phone > models they push through subsidies and promotions.
A sweeping statement that's not true. Where I live (Scandinavia) by law you can only tie a consumer down 6 months, and many phones are sold entirely "Uden håndjern" (without cuffs). > 2. As Steve Jobs predicted, the iPad competitors do have a hard time > matching the iPad's price (at comparable specs). True, but I wonder if that isn't just a case of marked confidence. Apple enjoys the benefits of a large and loyal consumer crowd carefully cultivated over the years. Whereas Motorola, HTC etc. have to send out probes to determine their share of the marked. So this would seem to come down to a timing issue, where Apple does enjoy a significant advantage in *any* marked, which won't last forever (if smartphones are any indicator). > Apple has a huge buying power (they supposedly buy 40% of the world's > Flash chip production) and is smart about their BOM (the use the same > CPU/graphic chip in the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Apple TV). I hope > Android (or HP) will get more competitive - I want the iPad to be > cheaper, too. :-) They do, but they still have to go out and buy much of this from i.e. Samsung who are supplying other vendors and their own product teams. It's interesting for instance, that Apple has no OLED product in their lineup, generally considered TFT superior and a technology of the future. > 3. The iPad has the most content (iTunes, iBooks) and decent software > for buying and managing it and the iOS devices (iTunes). I'll refrain to comment on the "decent software" part - I would personally would rather eat dirt than use iTunes. For sure, Apple has been a great emancipator of content (especially in the US) but the content issues you talk about are not magically resolved when you cross borders and have to negotiate with local rights-representatives. Interestingly, I see the fact that you have to have a wire to iTunes to activate or move content, as the achilles-heel of the Apple products. I mean, here you have father Steve preach on stage about the post-PC era, and then it turns out that your new iPhone or iPad is absolutely useless by itself, without a PC! > Predictions are always hard, especially when they concern the future. > However, based on these facts, I think that the iPad market share in > the U.S. a couple of years out will be in-between the current > smartphone one (25-30%) and the iPod one (70%), at 40-50%. I won't get into the prediction game, but I'll reformulate my original statement: I see no reason for why Android tablets wouldn't be able to compete, on their own terms. Two distinct attack vectors appears to be applied by Google, Android embedded into TV's and the cloud in general. I think it's more likely that Google can counter Apple than the other way around, regardless of Apple being constructing "one of the largest and most magic data-centers in the world". -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
