Why would a low-rent competitor that is blatantly stealing Apple's IP force them to lower the price?
Nothing to do with the Acer's sales, I'm sure it will be pretty poor in that department.
The fact that Acer can produce that device with a more powerful (and likely more expensive)Intel SoC and sell it for 50% of the iPad Mini (while making a profit) just goes to show how much of a profit Apple is making on the iPad Mini.
A consumer always wants the best price possible, and a profit margin greater than 50% is only going to benefit the company and maybe the investors.
Nothing to do with the Acer's sales, I'm sure it will be pretty poor in that department.
The fact that Acer can produce that device with a more powerful <span style="line-height:22.390625px;">(and likely more expensive)</span>
<span style="line-height:22.390625px;"> </span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">Intel SoC</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">and sell it for 50% of the iPad Mini (while making a profit)</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> just goes to show how much of a profit Apple is making on the iPad Mini. </span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">A consumer always wants the best price possible, and a profit margin greater than 50% is only going to benefit the company and maybe the investors. </span>
1) Who says they are making a profit?
2) Trying to determine profit based on another competitor's product is a fool's errand. A vendor can be poor at sourcing components, have an inefficient engineering team, not spend the proper time and money on safety standards, not spend money on adding something relatively costly you may not consider as a feature, have a poor shipping and distribution system, et al. … or be quite the opposite of that. We know from Apple that they designed the iPad mini, but it looks like Acer saved a lot of time in not designing it but copying the design. Did Acer use the same quality battery as Apple? Did Acer create an PSU that is as power efficient, safe, as well as being small? Did the chamfer their edges? If so, did they do it properly? Did Acer get a great deal on sourcing one or more components because they are otherwise useless to other vendors that would sell at a decent volume? Did Acer create this clone to get the free advertisement from tech blogs and people like you from the inevitable comparison to the company that has all the mindshare (even as CES 2014 is upon us and Apple still isn't attending)?
3) The only thing we know for sure form Apple is that economics of scale are a huge reason for their profitability. If Apple did all that work on the original iPad mini and only sold as many one could reasonably expect Acer to sell do you think Apple would be making any profit on the iPad mini? It's hard to know but we do know it wouldn't be nearly as much with only a small fraction of the unit sales.
We've seen such claims before just to have the real world results be much lower. Perhaps on paper it is 3x the performance since the A7 has a maximum of 1.4GHz and the Tegra K1 can have various clock rates applied thus making it much faster, albeit with a much worse power efficiency than the A7. If Nvidia claimed something like "3x the performance at the same power efficiency as Apple's A7" then it would be a breakthrough that would get me to take notice.
Just finished reading an slightly related story over at Ars that included comments on Nvidia's K1 processor:
"Nvidia's role is interesting, especially in light of the launch of the Tegra K1 on Sunday and its automotive potential. Nvidia's strength in SoCs has been its GPU, which has grown larger with each Tegra generation. The Tegra K1 is equipped with 192 Kepler-based GPU cores, paired with either a quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 or dual-core Denver ARMv8 64-bit application processor. During the announcement, NVIDIA highlighted how such a powerful SoC could be used to render near-photorealistic dials for a dashboard, and how well suited those 192 CUDA cores would be for assisting the driver by monitoring the environment for hazards and providing alerts."
Comments
Wonder how they think they’ll get away with it.
Wonder how they think they’ll get away with it.
No idea.
Considering they can sell that for $149, I think the iPad Mini ($299) is due for a price drop.
Considering they can sell that for $149, I think the iPad Mini ($299) is due for a price drop.
I doubt it. Apple doesn’t do mid-revision drops. And it’s not like the Acer is a better product in ANY capacity. There’s no threat.
Why would a low-rent competitor that is blatantly stealing Apple's IP force them to lower the price?
Why would a low-rent competitor that is blatantly stealing Apple's IP force them to lower the price?
Nothing to do with the Acer's sales, I'm sure it will be pretty poor in that department.
The fact that Acer can produce that device with a more powerful (and likely more expensive) Intel SoC and sell it for 50% of the iPad Mini (while making a profit) just goes to show how much of a profit Apple is making on the iPad Mini.
A consumer always wants the best price possible, and a profit margin greater than 50% is only going to benefit the company and maybe the investors.
Lenovo is launching their first LTE phone, the Vibe Z.
Vibe Z ($549)
Lenovo has previously stated their intention to enter the US market in 2014, this device might be a stepping stone for them.
1) Who says they are making a profit?
2) Trying to determine profit based on another competitor's product is a fool's errand. A vendor can be poor at sourcing components, have an inefficient engineering team, not spend the proper time and money on safety standards, not spend money on adding something relatively costly you may not consider as a feature, have a poor shipping and distribution system, et al. … or be quite the opposite of that. We know from Apple that they designed the iPad mini, but it looks like Acer saved a lot of time in not designing it but copying the design. Did Acer use the same quality battery as Apple? Did Acer create an PSU that is as power efficient, safe, as well as being small? Did the chamfer their edges? If so, did they do it properly? Did Acer get a great deal on sourcing one or more components because they are otherwise useless to other vendors that would sell at a decent volume? Did Acer create this clone to get the free advertisement from tech blogs and people like you from the inevitable comparison to the company that has all the mindshare (even as CES 2014 is upon us and Apple still isn't attending)?
3) The only thing we know for sure form Apple is that economics of scale are a huge reason for their profitability. If Apple did all that work on the original iPad mini and only sold as many one could reasonably expect Acer to sell do you think Apple would be making any profit on the iPad mini? It's hard to know but we do know it wouldn't be nearly as much with only a small fraction of the unit sales.
Claims 3x the performance of the A7? Hmmm...
We've seen such claims before just to have the real world results be much lower. Perhaps on paper it is 3x the performance since the A7 has a maximum of 1.4GHz and the Tegra K1 can have various clock rates applied thus making it much faster, albeit with a much worse power efficiency than the A7. If Nvidia claimed something like "3x the performance at the same power efficiency as Apple's A7" then it would be a breakthrough that would get me to take notice.
Just finished reading an slightly related story over at Ars that included comments on Nvidia's K1 processor:
"Nvidia's role is interesting, especially in light of the launch of the Tegra K1 on Sunday and its automotive potential. Nvidia's strength in SoCs has been its GPU, which has grown larger with each Tegra generation. The Tegra K1 is equipped with 192 Kepler-based GPU cores, paired with either a quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 or dual-core Denver ARMv8 64-bit application processor. During the announcement, NVIDIA highlighted how such a powerful SoC could be used to render near-photorealistic dials for a dashboard, and how well suited those 192 CUDA cores would be for assisting the driver by monitoring the environment for hazards and providing alerts."