LG, AU Optronics allegedly supplying 7.85" iPad screens to Apple - Page 2

I'll give this a shot. First, Apple has margins that any other manufacturer would kill for. If they felt that a credible competitor might actually gain a foot hold they could cut back on that margin a lot and still make a decent profit. Second, Apple has incredible economies of scale. Since they are buying in such large numbers, the parts that go into an Apple product cost less that do the parts that do into a competitor's product, even if they are the very same parts.

People have bought iPads because every other tablet was a piece of crap in comparison. And they have bought 9" iPads because that's all that existed. We don't know if a fair number of those people would have bought a 7" if it was available.

I believe that it is possible that Apple will come out with a 7" iPad. I wouldn't want to put any money on it, but I think it could happen. And I think they could make it as cheap as Amazon's tablet with more features and capability (but less than the current iPad).

Personally, I have no interest in 7". I am with the crowd what would like a slightly larger iPad, but I could see people who can't justify $500 part with $200 for a less capable, smaller version of the iPad. But, I agree that we will not know for sure until we see it at a press conference.

According to at least one poster, there was no truth to that message whatsoever. Apple was telling deliberate lies about the ideal form factor, and especially, told deliberate lies about their estmation of the success of a 7 inch form faactor.

Not only did Apple tell these blatent, barefaced lies, but the message was delivered by the CEO and Chairman of the Board, which is as official an oral statement as possible for a corporation to give.

But they lied, according to at least one poster. Shamelessly. In order to make profits.

EVIL is what that poster thinks of Apple.

But I think that Steve was sincere, and was not a scum sucking, pants on fire, lying sonofabitch. Just IMO.

I am not sure the Amazon thing is too much of a worry. More of a distraction. Apple will focus on lighter weight and same screen size.

Not that I think a smaller form factor is out of the question. Its a complicated issue as has been pointed out a million times. Merely increasing the dpi and using the iPad's current resolution won't be enough.

No way Apple will release such a device. It makes a lot more sense to release a Touch with a larger screen, something in the 5-inch range. An eight-inch tablet would be too large to slip into a pocket and too small to be enjoyable to use along the lines of the current iPad. The one point to going smaller than the iPad is to have a device small enough to be able to slip into a pocket and take anywhere. To me, that means a five-incher. That's still small enough to be pocketable yet large enough to provide a significantly more enjoyable browser/e-reader/media player than the current Touch. Make that device with the photo capabilities of the new iPhone and you've got a compelling device. In terms of price, if it came in half way between the iPad and the Touch (here in Canada) that would be between $299 for the 32GB Touch and $519 for the 16GB iPad. That would translate to something like $349 for a 16GB model and $449 for a 32GB model.

Could Apple move a 5" Touch with 16GB of memory at $349? I think so.

On the other hand, if they tried to bring out an 8" iPad, my guess is the price would be more in the range of about $399 for a 16GB model. A hard sell, in my view, considering another $120 gets you a full-size iPad which from a portability perspective which be roughly the same as the eight-inch model.

If a Touch with say 16GB of memory (if such a device existed) would check in at around $250, the eight-inch model would have to be at least $100 more and that means a price between $350 and $399. There's no viable business model for such a device, as Apple's competition is discovering. The 10-inch iPad is just too compelling a product at roughly $100 more.

On the other hand, if you go down from the eight-inch range to closer to five inches then two things happen. One is now you have a pocketable device making it compelling compared to the 10-inch iPad and the other is it becomes that much less expensive, adding even more to its appeal.

In addition, I could imagine someone buying both, i.e. a 5-incher for taking anywhere and the standard iPad for times when that portability is less important. The eight-inch device, on the other hand, would be something a person would choose to buy instead of the iPad, not as a compliment.

If Apple asked me what their next move should be, my vote would be for a sort of extra-large Touch. That device would seal the deal and effectively shut out the competition.

He also said video wouldn't come to the iPod.

I think a smaller iPad or bigger touch is a great idea!

it's because China wants to prevent foreign companies from getting traction over local Chinese companies. But actually only a small part of what goes into an iPhone is actually attributable to China. The phones are assembled in China, but parts come from Japan and Germany and I once saw an infographic that showed that something like less that 10% of the iPhones cost went to China. I'll see if I can track it down.

EDIT: Found it. Less than 4%

Then the only safe assumption is that everything Steve ever said is a lie. If one were to have taken him literally, then one would have been the victim of Steve's assertions which were lies.

The only safe way to avoid that victimization at the hands of Steve Jobs would have been to assume that everything he ever said might be a lie.

Sorry Charlie. I have more respect for the man that that.

So you are saying that Apple will produce a lower cost iPad by reducing its margins? That's just silly. The difference between the high end and low end version being margin?
As far as 7" I am on the fence. I think its a technically complicated issue knowing how Apple likes to keep things simple (resolution...) but perhaps. They will not compete with Amazon if their tablet is feature crippled. They will not compete with Amazon by cutting margins. They will compete with Amazon by being better in the broadest sense of the word - hw, sw and services / content.

I wouldn't expect much in the Pro line any more. Apple's focus has shifted. They make very, very little profit off of that stuff these days, on a relative basis.

I don't think Apple will continue to focus on their niche offerings. We'v e already seen infrastructure products discontinued in favor of a focus on the consumer market. And the market for "Pro" Macs is even smaller.

They will not follow the iPhone model for one very good reason: The iPhone is subsidized by the carriers, the iPad is not. So if they continue selling the iPad 2 at a lower price than the iPad 3 they will simply lose revenue, margin and profits as people buy the chepaer iPad 2. Look at the iPod Touch as a better example of what they will do. You can't buy the previous generation iPods from Apple once the new one comes out. The basic 6" Kindle is a good model to copy - it's very thin, light and fits nicely in the hand.

I work in the product development section of a manufacturer. We continually source samples of hundreds of components and supplies from suppliers world wide. This in no way indicates that any of them will wind up in any of our products. I would guestimate that less than 2% of the samples we get eventually end up in a product.

I think the point is that nothing a CEO says is set in stone. Which is kinda obvious really.

I actually don't think they would, but they could. Apple has maintained a strategy of not caring about market share and focussing on margins and high product differentiation. But, now they are the market leader with iPad. I don't know if they would be willing to let a competitor do to the iPad what PCs did to the Mac. If real competitor started to dramatically eat into the iPad space they might take a different strategy as the dominant player in the market. So far, they have been able to enjoy high margins and high market share. That is not usually maintainable in the long run. They may be able to do it, but time will tell. So, I'm not going to assume that the strategy that they used for the Mac will be the same for the iPad. I think Steve would have held true even it the iPad lost significant market share, but I don't know about Tim.

That's what I was thinking but I could see it having a negative effect on the bigger model if more people opted for the smaller, cheaper version. A smaller one certainly has its benefits but I don't expect Apple to make one.

We would see a lot more stuff being made in the USA if we stopped taxing the hell out of manufacturers for it building here. If our government takes 35% of what you build or make in the USA, it's a no brainer to move production to a different country.

We keep hearing people complain that Apple gets a 30% cut for distributing music and software, yet no one complains that our government gets a 35% cut of everything without giving any added value.

Way off topic. Stop it right now. It was a good discussion we had going.

Edit: But mrtotes gives you a good answer below, and I hope you don't answer him. Thanks.

It's not that Apple couldn't do 7" nor that 7" can't work for other products, but iOS doesn't work at 7". Does Apple really want to fragment iOS even further when they have three versions to manage?

Anyhow my recollection is that SJ said things like "Apple isn't interested in video iPods right now" (meaning they couldn't make a reasonable one) rather than "Apple will never make a video iPod".


Well they educate the workers for about the first 14 years of their lives, provide the infrastructure so you can move your product around, provide you a safe, healthy and secure environment to conduct your work and ensure that other businesses work with or around you in a reasonable way. That's quite a lot of value really.

Hope this is true. I'd buy one in a heartbeat. The difference between 9.7>7.85 is not so massive, and they can get away with using the same resolution. It shouldn't affect readability in most cases. Price at $299-$349, and they'll own the tablet market for years to come.

Yep. I have little doubt; if Apple can sell a 16 GB touch for $299 they can sell a 7" 16 GB touch max for $349.

I'm not sure either about the Fire as a worry, but what if they worked on something this size for a bit and decided that it was desirable in and of itself? That a mini iPad was cute as hell, adorable, in a 4:3 aspect ratio, for example? Nicer than even that 5" iPod touch they were working on?

Your other point is that a new size would task developers even if the iPad resolution remained the same? This is what speculators like me know nothing about. Any actual details about resolution dependence would be welcome. Thanks in advance if you or anyone chooses to engage this question . . . again, for the umpteenth time, I know.

That's totally reasonable.

But the OP claims something different: He claims that the statement was known to be untrue at the time it was spoken. That the statement was a deliberate, calculated lie. And that the reason why the company decided to embark upon a policy of deliberate deceit and manipulation was to make outsized profits.

But I don't buy that sort of crass cynicism about Steve Jobs.

Don't forget the difference aspect ratio makes in usable area...

7" @ 16:9 = 20.9 sq. in. usable area

9.7" @ 4:3 = 45.2 sq. in. usable area

7.85" @ 4:3 = 29.6 sq. in. usable area

Assuming Steve Jobs was referring to 7" @ 16:9 tablets, this would actually be a substantial increase in screen area over the tablets he was targeting with his comment.

Also it's quite possible that now that touch-devices have become common place, people are getting better with their tap-accuracy. Reading Apple's human interface guidelines on the iOS dev site, it's clear that they're continually testing this kind of thing. Maybe the average customer needed 40+ sq. in. 18 months ago, but 30 sq. in. will be perfectly usable by the spring...

Not to mentioned when Jobs slammed watching TV as a mindless activity not worth Apple's attention (why Apple didn't make a media center Mac) or about how nobody reads any more (why the Kindle was irrelevent). Yet we now have AppleTV and iBooks. There are many examples of Job's comments being more FUD than a statement of Apple's future products.

I don't get it. If you need to sand down your finger tips for a smaller iPad what about the iPhone?

Different use paradigm.

Maybe the 7.85" screens are for a MacBook Air nano. Lulz.

Calm down, CJ - there are other plausible explanations, like:

1) A 7.85 inch display is really an 8 inch display, not a 7 inch display. So maybe Jobs meant what he said and they later started investigating how small they could go and still be usable.

2) People change their minds, even Steve Jobs.

Oh yeah, makes sense to me.

Good work, but did someone say we were talking about 4:3 with these rumored screens? I mean I hope so, and that your reasoning here would be legit.

But I have to say, there are already a lot of cases where I get the wrong result on the iPad because of active touch areas being too close together. The Safari toolbar is a minefield of wrong input, for example.

Edit: On second thought, the report does say it would be the same resolution of the iPad, so I guess that means 4:3.

iPad and iPhone have many different GUI elements. Shrinking down the iPad GUI doesn't really result in an iPhone-like GUI.

On the other hand, now there's Siri. Could it be that Apple is moving toward a heavily Siri-oriented experience in a smaller iPad? Steve's comments about 7"-range screens being too small were directed at the tapping and multi-touch experience, not the viewing experience.

Think of it this way: iOS 1 through 4 have streamlined many computing tasks by eliminating overlapping windows, the Finder, and the file system in general. iOS 5 has added Siri as an extra layer of interaction. But Siri is still in "beta." It's still kind of an add-on. Maybe iOS 6 will have Siri baked in, with an API for developers to use in their apps. The user experience can be streamlined even further, with pure voice commands for many common tasks. We'll know by next year's WWDC.

By refining Siri even further, and maybe by releasing a heavily Siri-oriented "iPad mini," Apple could test and refine Siri enough to be used in other areas of consumer electronics. Voice recognition in cars is a glaring example of under-developed technology at the moment. And Apple already has a foot in the door in the auto industry, with iPod / iPhone / iPad integration. Think about it. It's an enormous market.

OS and applications designed for your pocket.

OS and applications designed for your hands.

I fail to see how you think you can sarcastically wave that off.

Agreed. Not going to happen.

It's for a visual 'magic pad' that will replace the numerical section on a keyboard - it will be programable for developers to design apps for; like game control functions or hot keys for Adobe products.

Neither do I. That he tailored an answer to make a point, or to avoid revealing something he deemed important not reveal, I wouldn't put past him. That is Politician 101 and he was a good politician. 'Whatever the question give the answer you want to give'.

To blatantly lie is a stupid move at the best of times as it is sure to come back and bite you in the arse.

That would be awesome. If apple introduced a 7 inch color e-inc display ahead of all the other ebook makers, that would kill any and all competition iPad ever had. However, I am not holding my breath obviously.

Siri will be the remote for the Apple TV.

One basic point - lets say you simply increase the pixel density to fit the same resolution image into a smaller screen - now everything is smaller and the time as a developer you spent on the perfect gui is no longer perfect. The navigation and objects may be too small. This is the reason why iPhone apps are different than iPad apps, not just shrunken versions.

I knew it!

Apple fans will be eating their own words.

Make sure to bring some sand papers while your at it, according to the late Steve Jobs.

Because price isn't the only variable a customer considers. Using your argument, why does Apple have different size screens for it's MBP line? Why don't they just create one size and simply change the amount of RAM, the size of the HD/SSD and the CPU speed? Why did they bother creating a 2nd size MacBook Air?

It's a bit trickier to have multiple screen sizes when you have a quasi-modal UI like iOS, but if there is a market (or a market to protect) it can be done. But I could see Apple increasing the screen size of the iPod touch before they make a smaller iPad. A scaled up UI would still be usable, where a scaled down one might make the buttons too small to accurately tap, for example. Plus if it's a scaled up touch, Apple can more easily explain (from a marketing point of view) any absense of featues they implement to differentiate the iPad. If they make a mini-iPad and it is missing any iPad features it could raise questions. Whereas a large touch with no/few new features wouldn't be as controversial.