Dell Kills Streak 7, Bails On Android Tablets 232
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Network World: "Dell has yanked the Dell Streak 7 tablet computer from its online stores, quietly acknowledging the failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers as the company redirects its tablet focus to combination work/play products. Word of the Streak 7's disappearance follows by a few months the death of the Streak 5, which debuted in summer 2010. The dual-core processor-powered Dell Streak 7 became available in January, marketed as a 4G wireless tablet via T-Mobile's network. Now Dell is directing would-be Streak buyers to Android and Windows Phone smartphones, and pushing a line of Windows Phone tablets for business."
Dell in trouble (Score:2)
That's about all that needs be said.
They had a good run, but they are a commodity PC maker and that's about all.
Re:Dell in trouble (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd give them more credit than just a commodity PC maker. They have made some significant acquisitions that run a lot of data centers. Equallogic is a fairly big player in mid-size data centers. They also picked up a fairly sizeable software distribution house in ASAP. Dell's problem has been getting away from what they were once superior at: Support. They still sell support, but don't seem to back it up like they used to, and a lot of people are starting to shy away from that.
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In my experience if you spend real money on computers through Dell (enough to actually have a sales person contact you, send you quotes, and setup a purchasing contract) your support would have been great and at least used to be to an American call center every timed you had to call in for support (24x7). This support was typically awesome and fast.
Their consumer support where you buy a pre-built boxed set or just a small handful of consumer class machines was almost always a call center in India (except fo
Way back when (Score:5, Interesting)
It's high stakes poker (Score:2)
It's like a high stakes poker game with a full table. Eventually, players bust out because they bet too much on a losing hand. Dell just doesn't have quite the same mix of top-notch industrial design and capable hardware that the top players have. Neither did HP, and so the weak are weeded out. Windows 8 might convince them to buy back in, but really this is Apple, Samsung, and HTC's game.
Re:It's high stakes poker (Score:5, Informative)
Are you kidding? Some are predicting the Kindle fire to sell 3.9 million this quarter http://recombu.com/news/amazons-kindle-fire-sales-second-place-to-ipad-set-to-vaporise-other-android-tab-sales_M15995.html [recombu.com], and others are predicting Apple to sell in the order of 13 million iPads http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-28/tech/30449262_1_ipads-piper-jaffray-apple-stores [businessinsider.com] .100,000 Xooms is less than a rounding error. To put it in perspective, Windows mobile 7 has more of the phone market than any of the non-kindle android tablets have of the tablet market.
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The Xoom was a market dud compared to the Transformer and Tab 10.1 - It was more expensive than the Tab 10.1 but didn't offer any of the features the Transformer or Tab 10.1 carried - it was heavier and thicker than the Tab, and it was MUCH more expensive than the TF even after purchasing the TF's dock.
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Most likely a lot of early adopters saw "Motorola" and assumed "locked bootloader", which meant "stay the fuck away".
I was completely shocked to find out the Xoom was supposed to be a "Google Experience" device along the lines of the Nexus line - I have to say I'm disappointed in Google for permitting a "Google Experience" device to have a locked bootloader.
Zune Brown (Score:4, Funny)
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Let's not forget built-in squirting.
Dude.. you're getting a Dell. (Score:2)
Good riddance.
Odd... (Score:2)
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While Samsung and a whole bunch of other companies have Android devices flying off the shelves, Dell seems unable to do the same. Curious and curiouser.
This a joke? According to the NPD, Samsung has only sold 192,000 tablets in the US (16% of a 1.2 million non apple tablet market.) For such a large country, buying so many ipads, I would say 192,000 is not exactly flying off the shelf.
Mind you, got to give it to Samsung that they at lest manage to sell that amount. Dell didnt even sell enough to show up in the top 5 list (http://www.npdgroup.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_111122b.) IF Dell happens to be 6th at 8% that would mean they sold 96,00
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The streak7 is a older design. Not even sure it has Market access, as i think Samsung did a fair bit of arm twisting to get that into the Galaxy Tab.
I would call this a complete marketing failure... (Score:2)
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Nope (Score:5, Informative)
Mass Market (Score:2)
So the fact most tablets are on the order of magn
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I wonder how much Apple gets away with by using the same internals for pad, pod and phone. Got to be some very nice bulk deals there. The others seems to have been stuck with Tegra because of some Google choice rather then being allowed to pick their own poison. Archos seems to be the first company to not use Tegra on a honeycomb tablet, and they are late to the game (but seems willing to update to ICS on existing products rather then try to sell yet another design as seen with ASUS and their transformer pr
I'm not even being facetious when i say... (Score:5, Insightful)
How the tune has changed (Score:2)
When the iPad came out all I heard was how overpriced it was. How you could get a netbook that does 10 times as much for less money. Now I see company after company failing to produce a comparable product at the same price, and a bzillion Slashdot posts about how no one can compete with Apple because they sell the iPad at a loss and make money back from the app store.
Close it down? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope Michael Dell take his own advice. [cnet.com].
What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"
Wow, I read that title wrong the first time... (Score:2)
This is why (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why people aren't as willing to buy from companies like Dell as opposed to Apple. A few quarters of less than stellar sales and they bail on the whole market and you're left with an unsupported device. Happened with the Zune, HP's tablet, some very good mp3 players of yore. And to add insult to injury, these companies expect to be able to charge the same for their devices as Apple does.
Gee whiz, I wonder why people choose an iPad where for exactly the same money they could have had an Android wanna-be from a company not completely behind their own product.
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Of course, a couple of years or so ago and some people were using that exact same line of argument to show how the iPhone was always going to dominate the market, and how Android would never be more than a curiosity.
And we all know how that turned out :)
Why... (Score:2)
... does Dell feel the need to make so much stuff? Nobody ever bought their crap MP3 players, I've never seen a Dell phone anywhere,* and now here they are, killing two tablets that were barely a year old. Are there companies who will buy from no one but Dell, and Dell feels that the more stuff they make, the more sales they'll get from these few customers? If that's what they think, it's obviously not working out. A lot of their products have lifespans measurable in months.
* I admit it's possible I've seen
Show of hands? (Score:3)
Who all saw this coming? Dell has to constantly try and play catchup with everyone else in the industry, it's pathological at this point. They ruined their reputation for having reliable workstations, they ruined their Gold Tech Support when they started outsourcing it to themselves (the new "Pro Support doesn't state the guy on the other end has to be certified A+ or MCP, just 'English Speaking'"), etc etc. What else do they have at this point but to try to hop on the next big thing and pray they can accidentally do it better than everyone else?
They need an Executive Enema. Get rid of these guys in suits desperate to have their name on the "next big thing(tm)" and maybe the ones that are left will be able to actually get some work done.
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Wow, its 2011 and you still haven't figured out how utterly meaning less A+ and MCP are yet?
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Better an A+ and MCP tech making a living wage of $12 an hour (+benefits) than Dell outsourcing the same jobs to a shell company they own and hiring people off the street for minimum wage (no benefits, no job security, etc).
Summary wording misleading (Score:3)
Dell doesn't know what they are doing, aren't making the KINDS of Android devices that people want, and not at the prices people want.
Sorry, but that doesn't make "failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers" an accurate statement. The correct statement is "Dell fails at figuring out how to make compelling Android devices that people want". Big difference.
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Microsoft doesn't have anything to do with it.
Apart from being the inspiration for it!
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Like Samsung (Galaxy Tab). Or Acer.
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I wasn't "being stupid". This is a discussion about the Steak 7, which is a tablet. The post I replied to was about the Xoom, which is a tablet. I referenced the Transfomer and the PlayBook, which are tablets.
There's no conflation of the two going on.
And yes, you're right to note that, while Android works very well on phones, it's been, well, let's be honest, a commercial failure on tablets, with even the best-of-breed examples competing on price and selling only when they hit fire-sale pricetag levels,
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If you think 350k/day is high imagine what you will think of the current number... 550k/day!
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/android-now-seeing-550000-activations-per-day/ [techcrunch.com]
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Those are mostly phones, not tablets. I actually quite like most Android phones, but the tablet experience has not been a good one (I'm on my second, now, a Xoom, after the failure that was the Optimus Pad). Android fans need to be honest with themselves: the product was rushed out the door by Google, and made worse by OEM incompetence/indifference/opportunism.
I am hoping ICS helps out, but I was not at all impressed with Honeycomb, to the point where I thou
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You make it sound like Android devices are the only ones that are heavily subsidized by carriers.
That's not the case of course.
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Android tablets are being subsidized by carriers. The iPad is not.
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So that's why Android tablets lost 8% marketshare last fiscal quarter?
I suspect it's as much because only Apple fanboys still think they really 'must have' a tablet while the rest of the world doesn't see much use for them. I played with a Transformer at a trade show a few months ago and it was kind of cool but I couldn't see myself doing anything with it that I don't really do with my netbook.
I read an interesting survey a few weeks back showing some huge percentage of iPad buyers bought it on hype and barely use the thing a few months later; I forget what site it was on.
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There are fewer netbooks in existence than there are tablets sold. That you happen to have a netbook doesn't mean anything for the 99.99999999999 of the population that doesn't.
A netbook is half the price of a Transformer and probably faster too. So if you're thinking of buying one you could just buy the netbook and save a few hundred bucks.
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Yeah, because a netbook is so great for reading magazines in portrait mode on.
Nah. NO SALE.
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Also, it was one of the many pre- Honeycomb Android tablets that never really caught on... Had the device been a Honeycomb device from the get-go (not possible given its release date...) it probably would have done much better.
Dell has, in general, failed to execute properly when it comes to Android. The Streak 5 was "meh" and didn't catch on, while Samsung's Galaxy Note is proving popular. Similarly, the Streak 7 was a dud, while Samsung's Galaxy Tab series did well enough to spawn a variety of Honeycom
Re:This is Dell (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
This quarter the iPad is hitting 65% market share. That's a lot, but remember it started the year in the high 90s. The only thing that might keep Android from being the top tablet platform in 2013 is Windows 8, and that's a long shot.
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And Android marketshare went from 34% to 26%. iPad is also expected to grow back to 75% share.
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You are getting this 65% market share from android manufacturers SHIPPING numbers. Those tablets aren't being sold. Who cares if Android manufacturers shipped 35% of the tablets out there when almost none (aside from the fire) were sold?
Re:This is Dell (Score:4, Interesting)
Where's your evidence to back this?
If Asus Transformers weren't shipping, then why was it impossible to order one that wasn't being price-scalped for at least 2-3 months after release? Even the traditional "non-scalping" vendors like Amazon were selling for $20-30 above MSRP.
Even after devices stopped being unobtainium, accessories were selling like crazy - even in June it was impossible to find chargers for the device.
Similarly - you are utterly and completely deluded if you think that a manufacturer would keep shipping tablets that weren't selling, and that retailers would keep these devices on the shelves. If you seriously think this is possible, I have one word for you: Touchpad.
Do you REALLY think Samsung is stupid enough to release two new tablet variants (the Tab 8.9 and the Tab 7.0 Plus) if the Tab 10.1 isn't selling well? If there's so little demand for the Tab 10.1, why is Apple so afraid of it?
Re:This is Dell (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck this absolutely stupid argument.
Do you really think all those tablet manufacturers make money from showing big numbers? No, they make money from selling, and if it doesn't sell, they pull it, just like Dell did. The same argument was raised about Android smartphones, but oddly enough we don't hear it all that much nowadays.
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Re:This is Dell (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
Its all in the price. Apparently a tablet that is worth about a quarter of an ipad sells really good at a quarter of an ipad price. Trying to sell "not as good as an ipad" for same or higher price doesn't work so well.
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Or to put it in a different way, people are not willing to spend more on a lesser known quantity. Lets face it, Apple have become very well known the last couple of years...
Re:This is Dell (Score:5, Insightful)
Or to put it in a different way, people are not willing to spend more on a lesser known quantity. Lets face it, Apple have become very well known the last couple of years...
Folks in the PC market were trained for years that "yeah an intel mac is just a PC but you pay twice the cost of the hardware to get the OSX software".
OK... for the sake of this argument I'll say I believe that. Personally I think it's wrong, but its a very popular viewpoint. I'll run with it and pretend.
So, the $400 ipad comes out. I've been trained that means the hardware costs $200 and you're paying $200 for the fancy apple software. OK here comes this android thing that is all free and open and stuff. That means I'll still be paying $200 for the hardware, but it'll be free software like linux and so I expect to pay $200 for this android tablet. What you say? List price $600 for the android tablet? F it, I'm not paying any more than $250 for it at most, I'm getting a "fairer" deal with the ipad.
Actually this is a pretty good question. How come ipads are not dramatically more expensive than android tablets? A kindle Fire should cost about as much as a "Regular old Kindle".. right? Its just a different software load, at least to a non-technical user. But no, its like twice as much... F that, I'm either buying a plain Kindle or a full fledged ipad. Remember the market placement disaster of the Edsel?
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The XPS is a big, thick, ugly, hunk of plastic shit. It's a fucking Dell man.
Yes, you can get a thicker, plastic Dell for less than a Macbook Pro. This has always been true. If you start looking at the thinner, lighter laptops that are made of real metal, the ones that are actually crafted to compete with Apple's laptops instead of with the generic Winblowz hunks of creaking shit out there, they cost the same or more than the Apples. If you add in the cost of Windows Ultimate (IE something with almost a
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Even my HTC Rhodium running xdandroid (about as far from an officially supported Android port as one can get - the device was a native Windows Mobile device and had a fairly weak CPU) had no problem scrolling through menus.
Re:This is Dell (Score:5, Informative)
In making your rant against Android fanboys (apparently anyone who doesn't have a problem with their Android phone is a fanboy...) you come across as the worst stereotype of an Apple fanboy.
When you show me one Android device that doesn't have OBVIOUS UI lag in scrolling, then ... and ONLY then will I even consider the idea that Android may eventually one day be comparable to iOS
Really? So it doesn't matter whether your device loses all signal when you hold it wrong, or if it churns through its battery in under a day after a software update, or if it prevents you from installing any apps that compete with those published by its maker, no, none of these matter. The sole criteria on which to judge the worthiness of a mobile platform is a minor graphical bug that has no real bearing on usability.
And if anybody claims that actually, they haven't seen that particular bug on their device, they're an ignorant fanboy whose opinion can be discounted.
Re:This is Dell (Score:4, Interesting)
> I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
Let me revise and extend you remark to make it more accurate:
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets at close to iPad prices.
Google has been playing games by withholding the source and access to the Market to all of the no-name products while ensuring all of the brand name ones keep their prices out of 'commodity' territory. Now that 4.0 is available perhaps they will allow the clones into the Market and prices to seek their own level. We shall then see if consumers are interested in Android tablets at half the price of an iProduct.
Personally I have zero interest in them at current pricing. They cost a lot more than a netbook yet have less stuff inside and no MIcrosoft tax to explain the higher price. And while the form factor is interesting, the price they pay is being less generally useful than a netbook or laptop. But get em down under $200 for fully equipped ones (GPS, BT, WiFi-n, camera, 1GHz+ CPU, good display) and I suspect uptake will pick up. But the Android forces have pretty much lost this Xmas selling season because there ain't no way products based on 4.0 will make it to stores in quantity this year.
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The Nook Touch is not a tablet - it's a book reader. Maybe what they really wanted was Nook Tablets. They might be kind of disappointed if they are expecting an iPad alternative and end up with an e-reader instead. Just sayin'.
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I beg to differ..they *can* be a full blown tablet.
You root them and put cyanogenmod7 on them and voila...great little tablet.
Isn't the e-ink screen going to make it painful for a lot of functions, though?
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My bad...I read the parent as using a Nook Color...not the eInk thing....
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My bad...I read the parent as using a Nook Color...not the eInk thing....
Ya I actually researched it a little. Cyanogenmod doesn't currently have a version that will run on a Touch at all. There was some interest in the forums, but even more comments wondering how useful it would even be...
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I have a netbook I almost never touch, and a Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a Bluetooth keyboard. There is one main reasn I use the Tab 10.1 - portability.
Portability is not just about the size - the Tab 10.1 is a little better than the netbook in size but not by much.
Where it blows away the netbook in portability is turn-on time and battery life - It gets the same "screen on" time as the netbook, but unlike the netbook, I can put it to sleep and wake it up in less than a second, and its battery life while sleeping
Re:This is Dell (Score:5, Insightful)
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Amazon has the superior marketing position, so they will probably do very well with that Fire product. Which is kind of a shame, really, because the like-priced Nook Color is better device, and for $50 more the Nook Tablet is far superior.
I had kind of decided I was going to plop down $150 for a refurbished NC myself, but then I compared it to the Nook Tablet at the B&N, and I don't think I'd be as happy with the Color. If it wasn't for the locked bootloader I'd probably have one by now.
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Do a little research...the locked bootloader isn't a problem anymore, it has been overcome.
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To be honest, who in a right mind would be interested in a Froyo (!) tablet with smartphone resolution (yes, my basement price smartphone has the same resolution) for a price rather close to an iPad? It is not a selling proposition, and it took Dell a very long time to realise that. And don't mention cost - the customer does not care one bit about cost.
Re:This is Dell (Score:5, Insightful)
Asus is selling 300k units per month of theirs. Lack of interest? Just because it doesn't have a pre-existing audience that would happily buy it even if it was a turd in a white box with Apple logo on it, doesn't mean there's no interest.
Streak failed because it was just plain not good. It shipped with Android 2.2 (not even 2.3), and they have only started rolling out Honeycomb in October - while all their competitors had Honeycomb tablets selling for months.
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Streak failed because it was just plain not good.
This a thousand thousand times. I've walked several people into Best Buy who were ready to buy tablets and explained the pros and cons of the various models. Not a single person has given the Streak a second glance. They usually go for the Transformer.
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err, turd in a white box? First gen AppleTV, iPod HiFi... I could name a few actual turds in a white box with fruit stamped on the side.
The audience for any given apple product isn't preexisting because we're all hard wired to automatically lust after anything from Cupertino.
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My droid x was a free upgrade and has done everything I've wanted.
What exactly is the problem here?
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Find where I said there was a "problem."
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By call them "cheap smartphones" you invoke images of flimsy feature-less hunks of plastic that can barely qualify for the smart- prefix.
Try using "less expensive" next time, the tablet and smartphone markets are flooded with chinese knockoffs and 3rd shift runs that very much qualify for the "cheap" designation. It's best to draw a very clear line between what you mean and what they make.
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Mine is no cheaper than an iPhone.
Both brands of phone are subsidized at similar levels.
If Apple doesn't have a "can't be bothered to pay more" option then that is by no means the fault of Android. That merely represents a group of customers that Apple chooses to ignore. So it is good that Apple isn't a monopoly.
Being willing to ignore wide swaths of the market is nothing to brag about.
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Yea, having standards of quality and user experience is nothing to brag about.
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When I visited an aunt recently, I was surprised to find that she went and bought herself an Android tablet. Surprisingly enough it was a model that I had been eyeballing myself.
Not everyone buys an Apple product by default.
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... Most people are below average...
Citation please. That implies that the "smart" are way smarter than the "dumb" are dumb. In my experience, the smart really aren't as smart as they think they are and the dumb folks aren't that dumb as they are told they are.
Re:Make money on the accessories, not the sticker (Score:5, Interesting)
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Quick google search shows me that the Droid 2 Global is a phone that sells for $580 [popularelect.com], not a tablet by any means. And where does your magical $100 price tag come from?
Will Windows 8 Tablet PC Edition matter? (Score:2)
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If you're going to have a rebuttal, citations are going to be needed. It basically sounded like you said "nuh uh!".
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Here, in handy picture form. [businessinsider.com]
Re:Revenue model (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's revenues from iTunes is far lower than the revenues from the hardware. Apple simply does not run iTunes for huge profits, and if it wasn't to sell hardware, would promptly abandon it.
I mean, 30% revenue means less than 30% profit margin after expenses (servers, hosting free content, iCloud, payment processing, etc). I think Apple only took around $1.5B profit from iTunes, and that includes apps, music, books and movies.
I believe the device (iPod, iOS) profit was 20 times that in the same period. Even Mac profit was an order of magnitude higher. than that. It's all in the Apple revenue filings. iTunes just doesn't make more than pocket change for Apple. There's not much of a loss Apple can take on hardware to be made up through iTunes.
Amazon's selling hardware to sell content. Apple's selling content in order to sell hardware (has been true since 2003 when the iTunes Music Store opened). The two can't have more opposite business models. (And Google's offering stuff for free to sell ads). You can see it in the device breakdowns - Apple's hardware really only costs $300 or less to make, while Amazon's basically selling at cost.
And HTC, Samsung, LG, etc seem to be doing fine selling hardware, as does Apple.
The only thing Apple and Amazon have in common is they sell "the whole experience" - devices with the ability to get content easily. Why they offer content may vary, but they know if they make it convenient, people will buy (it's how iTunes became the dominant force in music sales) and gives a lot of legitimacy to the stuff. (People back then accused Apple of enabling music piracy - Apple proved the music industry was Doing It Wrong(tm)).
The other content with hardware guys in the game are Barnes and Noble and Kobo. I don't think the Nook Color is sold at a loss given how B&N seems to let that tablet be hacked trivially.
And nevermind the "success" of such greats like RIM (Blackberry App World), HP (remember WebOS? They had an app store?) who also mixed the hardware-with-content offerings.
tl;dr - Apple doesn't make much money off iTunes - see their last earnings report and hardware sales consistently outdo iTunes sales by wide margins.
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from my own experience I'd have to concur.
I bought an iTouch and got an iPad (included as severance from my company). The latest device has bout 32 Gigs and that is almost entirely Apps. Most of these apps have been free, and a handful cost less than $5.
Having had iPods, iTouch and now iPad for about as long as they've been available, I think in total I probably spent less than $150 since the iTunes store has been ready for business. I get most of my music from "can't pass up" deals at Amazon.
Apple would go
Re:Revenue model (Score:4, Informative)
Here it is in handy picture form. [businessinsider.com] Anyone who thinks Apple sells devices cheap to make it up on software and content is grossly misinformed.
Re:Revenue model (Score:5, Informative)
However, Apple makes so much money off of the App store that they could undoubtedly sell the hardware at a loss and still profit overall. They just don't need to - at least not at this point.
According to the Q3 earning reports, iTunes generates 5% of the profits, with the iPad hardware sales generating 21% . iTunes pfofits are about half music so lets be generous and say 2.5% of the company profits are app sales. Given 47% of the sales being iPhones, and asuming equal ratios, that means about 1.117% of the company profits are due to iPad app sales.
Selling the iPad at a loss would cut an insane amount of profit and generate nearly no extra income, not to mention that a lower price point encourages people with singier pockets to buy it, meaning the app sale percentage will likely go further down.
So apple does need to sell the iPad at a profit.
How can Dell, HP, Motorola, HTC compete in this scenario, when the only thing they can make money off of is the hardware?
Those companies may get a chance once Windows 8 comes out. If managed properly, it may fare much better than the phone offerings. Microsoft will have office for Windows 8 Metro. That alone will surely encourage many consumers that shy from tablets due to productivity concerns, a market Android Tablets does not cover.
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Microsoft will have office for Windows 8 Metro. That alone will surely encourage many consumers that shy from tablets due to productivity concerns, a market Android Tablets does not cover.
I'm sure people will just be lining up to run a word processor on a tablet with no keyboard.
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USB and Bluetooth covers that. Hell, seems one of the most used keyboards on android tablets right now is the Apple Bluetooth keyboard because it is slim and easy to pack.
And yes, one may wonder why people bother as then they are basically using a laptop...
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Usually you keep the keyboard at the desk and dont take it with you when you "go mobile".
I am fond of cases that have built in keyboards, though. "Why bother?" I have an iPad for gaming mostly. Cant get Touch based Unreal Engine games like Infinity Blade anywhere else. And I also like to sometimes just type. The bluetooth case allows me to flip the keyboard away very easily, sometimes just remove the thing from the case entirely, while also giving me typing flexibility.
Windows Phone tablets branding breakdown (Score:2)
They should be hoping so, as Windows Phone tablets is a total branding breakdown that's just out the door for a brand name that's a refresh of a brand name that's a refresh of a brand name.