Well I ordered one. The price looks like it can't be beat, and it will do Google Reader and web browsing just as well as any iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
I'd be surprised if what you say is true. The 7" form factor at their aspect ratio makes it unusable in landscape for any onscreen kb entry -- there is just not enough area above the kb to see more than a few lines of content/typing. Imagine surfing AI forums and posting replays to threads with quotes.
While OK as a reader in portrait mode, it would be difficult to use the smaller onscreen kb.
Finally, with the iPad iCloud ecosystem and iTunes match -- you can get access to all your music with little or no need to upload. We have 16,000 songs available to all our iPads. I took about 20 minutes to match our music from 3 Macs, then about 2-3 hours to upload the songs we have that are not on Apple's servers... all done automatically.
Well I ordered one. The price looks like it can't be beat, and it will do Google Reader and web browsing just as well as any iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
Thats fine you ordered one- your money. Report back its goods and bads if you'd like. I have a follow-up question though- if Apple released a mini for $249 (8gb) and $299 (16gb)- so $50 more- but it had an aluminum back and retina, would you have bought that instead?
Yep... one cannot beat low prices on garbage. You get what you pay for.
I've looked at almost all the available reviews on the Nexus 7 and the consensus is far from garbage. Now I would agree there are a lot of garbage Android phones out there, but this tablet does appear to be quite good. I'll defer final judgement though until these things start shipping to the masses.
Thats fine you ordered one- your money. Report back its goods and bads if you'd like. I have a follow-up question though- if Apple released a mini for $249 (8gb) and $299 (16gb)- so $50 more- but it had an aluminum back and retina, would you have bought that instead?
I would, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Note that per their usual methodology, they are only including direct labor in their 'manufacturing costs'. They are not including:
- Packaging
- Shipping
- Quality control costs
- Rework and scrap
- R&D costs
- Support costs
- Legal costs
- Licensing costs (one report says that Microsoft alone gets $15 per Android device)
- Manufacturing overhead
- Corporate overhead allocated to manufacturing
- Advertising
That puts the cost at much, much higher than $159.
On top of that, if they are selling this through any distribution channel, the distributor is going to take a portion of the retail, so Google would not receive the full $199.
When you figure all the costs they didn't include plus the discount offered to retailers, it sounds like a break-even, at best. But even if you accept their figures and ignore all the additional costs and the retailer discounts, they're only at 20% GM - which is hardly a reasonable margin for what is being sold as a premium product.
Fail.
Thank you for pointing this out. How stupid are these people to not consider all the other costs involved with bringing a product to market and then supporting it after the consumer buys it?
If these numbers are true, and assuming the Apple 7.85" (or is it 7"?) rumors are true, the 16GB mini-tablet will be priced at $249. Just to kill off these interlopers, and yet make a 'decent enough' profit.
After all, Apple could probably get the components even cheaper than Google or Amazon could, given the likely volumes.
But the iPod Touch would be done for, though... (unless they cut its price by $100, which is unlikely).
I disagree.
All the other competitors are selling at cost and doing a roughly $200 price point. By the time the iPad mini launches, they will be even lower. Next year, lower again. Before the 2.0 version of the iPad mini launches the competition will be pricing at $150 or so.
Especially if the screen really is the old low-res one, the iPad mini *needs* to be $200 or less. Even if the iPad mini blows away the competition in technical prowess or even features, the consumer is just going to see two 7" tablets, one for $200 and one for $250.
This tablet will be a joke if and when Apple releases the rumored mini-iPad soon.
Do you Apple fanboys really want to live in a world with no competition? Do you think that would spur Apple on to innovate and keep prices down? Would it hurt you to once in every 10 million venom filled posts to say that someone other than Apple is capable of producing something nice?
The Nexus 7 is getting great reviews and is priced extremely aggressively. There's no reason why it shouldn't do well.
Yep... one cannot beat low prices on garbage. You get what you pay for.
I'm so pleased I don't live in the Apple fanboy bizzaro world where everything without an Apple logo is worse than sewage. Did you even bother to read any Nexus 7 reviews before spewing hate? I've read a few, and it's getting great scores, as it should based on the extremely good specs (the CPU and GPU are considerably quicker than the iPad 3 for example) and great OS. And as a bonus, no hideous skeumorphism in the built in apps.
Apple could price the iPod touch, the iPad mini, and the iPad as follows:
iPod touch: no more 8GB, 16GB - $199, 32GB - $299, 64GB - $399
iPad mini: 8GB - $199, 16GB - $299, 32GB - $399
the new iPad: 16GB - $499, 32GB - $599, 64GB - $699
Going from the iPod touch to the iPad mini, you would get a bigger screen but less flash memory at the same price. This is just hypothetical, of course. But, Apple is likely to offer an iOS device all the way from $200 to $700 (without cellular). This will make it difficult for anybody to compete.
I think it extremely unlikely that Apple would bother to make an 8GB iPad mini (or an 8GB anything for much longer).
It's just too small, even for crap magazines and a few PDF's and games.
IMO it's far more likely that Apple will do what they typically do which is produce the mini in the same "size steps" as the regular iPad. They will be 16GB, 32GB, & 64GB, and the low end one (16GB), will certainly not be $300.
I wouldn't be naive enough to think that any other company is collecting your data, Google is just very forward about it, and in exchange, they serve you ads and you get free services. If you feel that you don't like that relationship, you can choose not to use their products. But keep in mind that certain things simply don't work if not collected from users, like real-time traffic data.
You're being obfuscatory on purpose here. Apple does not steal your data in general and couldn't care less about your personal information. Even when they request and take information from you it's all up front, and almost alway anonymous.
Google and Facebook on the other hand are totally different. To seriously talk about these things as if they are the same is utter insanity.
From another thread that said there is no way Apple could make a $200 iPad mini who wanted to argue with me there is no profit (as if Apples buying power wouldn't be different than Google).
I still think it'll be more like $249 or $299, but to say there is no profit is now debunked. Just saying....
No, it hasn't been debunked. See my posts where I demonstrate that this 'analysis' grossly underestimates the costs and overestimates Google's share of the revenue. You don't have any idea of whether Apple would make money at $200.
Again- I say this under the guise that I, too, think Apple will sell it for $249 or $299. But lets not pretend that Apple doesn't sell a device for around cost. iPod touches have consistently been for years ~$155 for parts just like this breakdown although the price was $229.. Now estimates on cost last year when they dropped the price, it dropped to around $142. And... holy crap- they sell for $199. Wow....
Apple, like anyone, likes to get a large market share hooked young and early. Why else would the shuffle still exist?
I'd love to see your evidence for that - from a reliable source.
As it is, Apple doesn't report gross margin by product line AFAIK, so you can only guess. But given that their average GM is 40% and Apple's strategy doesn't include loss leaders, it's extremely unlikely that they're selling the iPod Touch at cost.
BTW, have you noticed the gross inconsistency in your position? On one hand, you argue that Apple is selling the iPod Touch ($229) at or near cost, but on the other hand, you argue that they could make a decent margin on a 7" iPad at $199 (and a healthy margin at $249). Considering that the iPad has a lot more materials, 4x the screen size, faster processor, and much larger battery, those two positions are contradictory. If they sell the iPad Mini at roughly the same cost as the iPod Touch ($249 vs $229), the margins will be much lower on the iPad Mini. If they sell the iPad Mini below the current price of the iPod Touch (i.e., $199), they would lose money - or, at the very least, not make anything.
If Apple had put out this tablet, they would be skewered by the tech pundits for it being Wi-Fi only, no retina display, max capacity of 16 GB, and no rear facing camera. Google does it and the tech pundits swallow the Kool-Aid and tout it no end.
If Apple had put out this tablet, they would be skewered by the tech pundits for it being Wi-Fi only, no retina display, max capacity of 16 GB, and no rear facing camera. Google does it and the tech pundits swallow the Kool-Aid and tout it no end.
I'm not sure why everyone is harping on the WiFi only. I can tether through my phone if needed.
If you had read any of the Nexus 7 reviews you will find that most of them point out, no rear camera, no 3G/4G and no external storage as the "not cool/tired" factors of the Nexus 7. The display at 216 ppi gets very good reviews, it's close enough to retina to not make much difference at that size.
I'm not sure why everyone is harping on the WiFi only. I can tether through my phone if needed.
If you had read any of the Nexus 7 reviews you will find that most of them point out, no rear camera, no 3G/4G and no external storage as the "not cool/tired" factors of the Nexus 7. The display at 216 ppi gets very good reviews, it's close enough to retina to not make much difference at that size.
Here's a smattering of the negative aspects to the reviews.
Sure, it'd be useful to have a full size USB host port, microSD slot (though no Nexus has shipped with one since Nexus S), 5 GHz WiFi (Nexus 7 is 2.4 GHz only), or cellular, but the tablet wouldn't be $199 anymore.
The Not-so-Good:
Storage: If you are going to buy a Nexus 7, buy the 16GB version. It will run you $249, but the extra internal storage will be worth it. My unit only has 8GB of storage, and trust me when I say that you can fill that up in no time. If you are a media junky that downloads more than a movie or two at a time for travel, you will run out of space quickly. 2GB or so are taken up by the OS, so after downloading a couple of big HD games and a 2.5GB HD movie or two, you will have nothing left. And since there isn’t a microSD slot to expand that storage amount, you need to invest in the extra storage up front.
Rear Camera: I personally couldn’t care less that the Nexus 7 does not have a rear camera, but some of you might. If you are into taking pictures with a giant glass slab, then this could be a downer to you. Most tablets these days, other than the Kindle Fire, have a rear camera, however, this was likely a move to keep the price down.
No HDMI or MHL: Sorry, folks, the Nexus 7 does not have much of a video-out option. It’s microUSB port does not support MHL and there isn’t an HDMI slot to b e found either. Leaving either of these out is probably a cost cutting measure, but with Google also trying to push the Nexus Q and its wireless media playback, this sort of makes sense. That doesn’t mean we aren’t disappointed, though.
Although the Nexus 7 has very good Wi-Fi and we were able to tether from a mobile hotspot with ease, we'd love to see a slightly more expensive model with 4G LTE, accompanied by sweet month-to-month data plans, in the near future.
Android is still playing catch-up when it comes to tablet-friendly apps, but we're hopeful those kinks will start to get ironed out if and when consumers gravitate to the Nexus 7.
Our biggest lament is the muted contrast of the otherwise quite stellar IPS display; while it's not a total deal breaker, we're holding out hope that Google might push out a software update to bring the gamma levels in line with competing hardware, assuming it's not simply a glitch with our review unit.
Very limited storage. Google Play media store doesn't quite work. No HDMI or MHL to connect the tablet to HDTVs.
But there are also plenty of places where you can pick holes in the Nexus 7. There will be tablets that are better with media, with more native support for features and wider physical connectivity. Then there is the issue of those services that you don't get outside the US.
Do you Apple fanboys really want to live in a world with no competition?
This is not competition. It's merely a low priced tablet, though I'm sure that there is a certain market for such a tablet. Why would such a product interest me, when I already own the best tablet available? If somebody else came up with something that was truly impressive, then I might change my tune.
Do you Apple fanboys really want to live in a world with no competition? Do you think that would spur Apple on to innovate and keep prices down? Would it hurt you to once in every 10 million venom filled posts to say that someone other than Apple is capable of producing something nice?
The Nexus 7 is getting great reviews and is priced extremely aggressively. There's no reason why it shouldn't do well.
I have no issues or concerns with Apple's ability to innovate. It's the rest of the barren tech landscape populated by mainly cheap, second-tier, third-rate wannabes -- probably the only world that you understand -- that I find laughable. No, make that pitiful.
Yeah, "great reviews" for Nexus 7. Same as the reviews that worked out so fabulously for Amazon's "iPad killer."
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by neiltc13
Well I ordered one. The price looks like it can't be beat, and it will do Google Reader and web browsing just as well as any iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
I'd be surprised if what you say is true. The 7" form factor at their aspect ratio makes it unusable in landscape for any onscreen kb entry -- there is just not enough area above the kb to see more than a few lines of content/typing. Imagine surfing AI forums and posting replays to threads with quotes.
While OK as a reader in portrait mode, it would be difficult to use the smaller onscreen kb.
Finally, with the iPad iCloud ecosystem and iTunes match -- you can get access to all your music with little or no need to upload. We have 16,000 songs available to all our iPads. I took about 20 minutes to match our music from 3 Macs, then about 2-3 hours to upload the songs we have that are not on Apple's servers... all done automatically.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neiltc13
Well I ordered one. The price looks like it can't be beat, and it will do Google Reader and web browsing just as well as any iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
Yep... one cannot beat low prices on garbage. You get what you pay for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neiltc13
Well I ordered one. The price looks like it can't be beat, and it will do Google Reader and web browsing just as well as any iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
Thats fine you ordered one- your money. Report back its goods and bads if you'd like. I have a follow-up question though- if Apple released a mini for $249 (8gb) and $299 (16gb)- so $50 more- but it had an aluminum back and retina, would you have bought that instead?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdonisSMU
I will be getting my Nexus 7 next week.
If you get it today does that mean you won't come back to troll?
Quote:
Originally Posted by sflocal
Yep... one cannot beat low prices on garbage. You get what you pay for.
I've looked at almost all the available reviews on the Nexus 7 and the consensus is far from garbage. Now I would agree there are a lot of garbage Android phones out there, but this tablet does appear to be quite good. I'll defer final judgement though until these things start shipping to the masses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andysol
Thats fine you ordered one- your money. Report back its goods and bads if you'd like. I have a follow-up question though- if Apple released a mini for $249 (8gb) and $299 (16gb)- so $50 more- but it had an aluminum back and retina, would you have bought that instead?
I would, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Note that per their usual methodology, they are only including direct labor in their 'manufacturing costs'. They are not including:
- Packaging
- Shipping
- Quality control costs
- Rework and scrap
- R&D costs
- Support costs
- Legal costs
- Licensing costs (one report says that Microsoft alone gets $15 per Android device)
- Manufacturing overhead
- Corporate overhead allocated to manufacturing
- Advertising
That puts the cost at much, much higher than $159.
On top of that, if they are selling this through any distribution channel, the distributor is going to take a portion of the retail, so Google would not receive the full $199.
When you figure all the costs they didn't include plus the discount offered to retailers, it sounds like a break-even, at best. But even if you accept their figures and ignore all the additional costs and the retailer discounts, they're only at 20% GM - which is hardly a reasonable margin for what is being sold as a premium product.
Fail.
Thank you for pointing this out. How stupid are these people to not consider all the other costs involved with bringing a product to market and then supporting it after the consumer buys it?
Part costs are not true cost. There are other development related costs, not to mention labor, support, and marketing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
If these numbers are true, and assuming the Apple 7.85" (or is it 7"?) rumors are true, the 16GB mini-tablet will be priced at $249. Just to kill off these interlopers, and yet make a 'decent enough' profit.
After all, Apple could probably get the components even cheaper than Google or Amazon could, given the likely volumes.
But the iPod Touch would be done for, though... (unless they cut its price by $100, which is unlikely).
I disagree.
All the other competitors are selling at cost and doing a roughly $200 price point. By the time the iPad mini launches, they will be even lower. Next year, lower again. Before the 2.0 version of the iPad mini launches the competition will be pricing at $150 or so.
Especially if the screen really is the old low-res one, the iPad mini *needs* to be $200 or less. Even if the iPad mini blows away the competition in technical prowess or even features, the consumer is just going to see two 7" tablets, one for $200 and one for $250.
They will pick the $200 one most of the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Apple ][
Waste of money.
This tablet will be a joke if and when Apple releases the rumored mini-iPad soon.
Do you Apple fanboys really want to live in a world with no competition? Do you think that would spur Apple on to innovate and keep prices down? Would it hurt you to once in every 10 million venom filled posts to say that someone other than Apple is capable of producing something nice?
The Nexus 7 is getting great reviews and is priced extremely aggressively. There's no reason why it shouldn't do well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sflocal
Yep... one cannot beat low prices on garbage. You get what you pay for.
I'm so pleased I don't live in the Apple fanboy bizzaro world where everything without an Apple logo is worse than sewage. Did you even bother to read any Nexus 7 reviews before spewing hate? I've read a few, and it's getting great scores, as it should based on the extremely good specs (the CPU and GPU are considerably quicker than the iPad 3 for example) and great OS. And as a bonus, no hideous skeumorphism in the built in apps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleGreen
Not necessarily.
Apple could price the iPod touch, the iPad mini, and the iPad as follows:
iPod touch: no more 8GB, 16GB - $199, 32GB - $299, 64GB - $399
iPad mini: 8GB - $199, 16GB - $299, 32GB - $399
the new iPad: 16GB - $499, 32GB - $599, 64GB - $699
Going from the iPod touch to the iPad mini, you would get a bigger screen but less flash memory at the same price. This is just hypothetical, of course. But, Apple is likely to offer an iOS device all the way from $200 to $700 (without cellular). This will make it difficult for anybody to compete.
I think it extremely unlikely that Apple would bother to make an 8GB iPad mini (or an 8GB anything for much longer).
It's just too small, even for crap magazines and a few PDF's and games.
IMO it's far more likely that Apple will do what they typically do which is produce the mini in the same "size steps" as the regular iPad. They will be 16GB, 32GB, & 64GB, and the low end one (16GB), will certainly not be $300.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdonisSMU
I will be getting my Nexus 7 next week.
I'm waiting for the Apple iPad mini this Fall!
Quote:
Originally Posted by dagamer34
I wouldn't be naive enough to think that any other company is collecting your data, Google is just very forward about it, and in exchange, they serve you ads and you get free services. If you feel that you don't like that relationship, you can choose not to use their products. But keep in mind that certain things simply don't work if not collected from users, like real-time traffic data.
You're being obfuscatory on purpose here. Apple does not steal your data in general and couldn't care less about your personal information. Even when they request and take information from you it's all up front, and almost alway anonymous.
Google and Facebook on the other hand are totally different. To seriously talk about these things as if they are the same is utter insanity.
No, it hasn't been debunked. See my posts where I demonstrate that this 'analysis' grossly underestimates the costs and overestimates Google's share of the revenue. You don't have any idea of whether Apple would make money at $200.
I'd love to see your evidence for that - from a reliable source.
As it is, Apple doesn't report gross margin by product line AFAIK, so you can only guess. But given that their average GM is 40% and Apple's strategy doesn't include loss leaders, it's extremely unlikely that they're selling the iPod Touch at cost.
BTW, have you noticed the gross inconsistency in your position? On one hand, you argue that Apple is selling the iPod Touch ($229) at or near cost, but on the other hand, you argue that they could make a decent margin on a 7" iPad at $199 (and a healthy margin at $249). Considering that the iPad has a lot more materials, 4x the screen size, faster processor, and much larger battery, those two positions are contradictory. If they sell the iPad Mini at roughly the same cost as the iPod Touch ($249 vs $229), the margins will be much lower on the iPad Mini. If they sell the iPad Mini below the current price of the iPod Touch (i.e., $199), they would lose money - or, at the very least, not make anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markbyrn
If Apple had put out this tablet, they would be skewered by the tech pundits for it being Wi-Fi only, no retina display, max capacity of 16 GB, and no rear facing camera. Google does it and the tech pundits swallow the Kool-Aid and tout it no end.
I'm not sure why everyone is harping on the WiFi only. I can tether through my phone if needed.
If you had read any of the Nexus 7 reviews you will find that most of them point out, no rear camera, no 3G/4G and no external storage as the "not cool/tired" factors of the Nexus 7. The display at 216 ppi gets very good reviews, it's close enough to retina to not make much difference at that size.
Quote:
Originally Posted by patpatpat
I'm not sure why everyone is harping on the WiFi only. I can tether through my phone if needed.
If you had read any of the Nexus 7 reviews you will find that most of them point out, no rear camera, no 3G/4G and no external storage as the "not cool/tired" factors of the Nexus 7. The display at 216 ppi gets very good reviews, it's close enough to retina to not make much difference at that size.
Here's a smattering of the negative aspects to the reviews.
Sure, it'd be useful to have a full size USB host port, microSD slot (though no Nexus has shipped with one since Nexus S), 5 GHz WiFi (Nexus 7 is 2.4 GHz only), or cellular, but the tablet wouldn't be $199 anymore.
The Not-so-Good:
Storage: If you are going to buy a Nexus 7, buy the 16GB version. It will run you $249, but the extra internal storage will be worth it. My unit only has 8GB of storage, and trust me when I say that you can fill that up in no time. If you are a media junky that downloads more than a movie or two at a time for travel, you will run out of space quickly. 2GB or so are taken up by the OS, so after downloading a couple of big HD games and a 2.5GB HD movie or two, you will have nothing left. And since there isn’t a microSD slot to expand that storage amount, you need to invest in the extra storage up front.
Rear Camera: I personally couldn’t care less that the Nexus 7 does not have a rear camera, but some of you might. If you are into taking pictures with a giant glass slab, then this could be a downer to you. Most tablets these days, other than the Kindle Fire, have a rear camera, however, this was likely a move to keep the price down.
No HDMI or MHL: Sorry, folks, the Nexus 7 does not have much of a video-out option. It’s microUSB port does not support MHL and there isn’t an HDMI slot to b e found either. Leaving either of these out is probably a cost cutting measure, but with Google also trying to push the Nexus Q and its wireless media playback, this sort of makes sense. That doesn’t mean we aren’t disappointed, though.
Although the Nexus 7 has very good Wi-Fi and we were able to tether from a mobile hotspot with ease, we'd love to see a slightly more expensive model with 4G LTE, accompanied by sweet month-to-month data plans, in the near future.
Android is still playing catch-up when it comes to tablet-friendly apps, but we're hopeful those kinks will start to get ironed out if and when consumers gravitate to the Nexus 7.
Our biggest lament is the muted contrast of the otherwise quite stellar IPS display; while it's not a total deal breaker, we're holding out hope that Google might push out a software update to bring the gamma levels in line with competing hardware, assuming it's not simply a glitch with our review unit.
Very limited storage. Google Play media store doesn't quite work. No HDMI or MHL to connect the tablet to HDTVs.
But there are also plenty of places where you can pick holes in the Nexus 7. There will be tablets that are better with media, with more native support for features and wider physical connectivity. Then there is the issue of those services that you don't get outside the US.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kotatsu
Do you Apple fanboys really want to live in a world with no competition?
This is not competition. It's merely a low priced tablet, though I'm sure that there is a certain market for such a tablet. Why would such a product interest me, when I already own the best tablet available? If somebody else came up with something that was truly impressive, then I might change my tune.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kotatsu
Do you Apple fanboys really want to live in a world with no competition? Do you think that would spur Apple on to innovate and keep prices down? Would it hurt you to once in every 10 million venom filled posts to say that someone other than Apple is capable of producing something nice?
The Nexus 7 is getting great reviews and is priced extremely aggressively. There's no reason why it shouldn't do well.
I have no issues or concerns with Apple's ability to innovate. It's the rest of the barren tech landscape populated by mainly cheap, second-tier, third-rate wannabes -- probably the only world that you understand -- that I find laughable. No, make that pitiful.
Yeah, "great reviews" for Nexus 7. Same as the reviews that worked out so fabulously for Amazon's "iPad killer."