Apple @ MacWorld Tokyo

rschroeder writes "Apple updated several products at MacWorld Tokyo tonight (or tomorrow morning). A $499 10-gig iPod, with, get this, custom laser engraving on the back, ($49 extra) and vCard support. They also announced a $49 USB bluetooth module, shipping in April, with beta drivers availble today. Among other tricks, Jobs synced a Clie with a mac via bluetooth. Also a new 23" (1920x1200 )Cinema Display. Jobs also said they're raising the price of the iMac due to LCD and RAM cost increases. All this courtesy MacMinute.com's live coverage." Maccentral has several stories about Jobs' keynote at the convention.

Comments

Re:the prices goes UP?

[dhovis]

That $400 price for the iPod HD was true when the iPod first came out, but the price has come down quite a bit. You can get a 5GB firewire drive based on that HD for as little as $170. Check out this article at dealmac.com.

The real reason the 5GB iPod is still $400 is that people are still buying it. If Apple was having trouble selling them, the price would have dropped to $350 or $300. They are still hot, and there is still no comparable MP3 player on the market, period. Size, capacity, battery life, and firewire. No other MP3 player matches the iPod in all 4 of those categories. Until one does, Apple can charge what they damn well please. That is the free market at work.

BlueTooth

[pinkpineapple]

This is big. If Apple is on the blue tooth train, then it means that the standard will be back from the dead when M$ put it by not supporting it in XP, and will become successfull (see USB for some background.) Apple is obviously working on new desktop and laptop systems with bluetooth integrated. It's not rumors but very certain that BT is what Apple need for their digital hub strategy. I wonder how they are going to cop with interference between BT and 802.11b. And it will be really funny to see how other vendors are playing catch up with Apple when they realize that bluetooth is a really neat solution to connect devices. In M$ interest not to connect easily with Palm, this is the only reason why the beast of Redmond killed the technology by not releasing drivers last summer. However, all the devices like PDAs (ex: iPaq, Loox, etc...) are released in Japan with BlueTooth in standard. Again, US is lagging big time behind Japan when it comes to wireless (3G, and now BlueTooth.)

PPA, the girl next door.

RAM pricing

[Animats]

I hadn't looked at the DRAM industry in a while, and was surprised to see what's happening. Back in the 1980s, the Asian countries took the DRAM business away from the US, and Intel exited the DRAM business.

Things have changed. Micron (Boise, Idaho) is taking over the industry. They bought Toshiba's DRAM business, they bought TI's business, they bought KMT's business, and are negotiating to buy Hynex, which is in trouble. They and Samsung are in a race for the #1 spot now; if the the Hynex deal goes through, Micron will be far bigger than Samsung in DRAM.

In 2001, there was a huge DRAM glut, which pushed prices down. Micron, instead of cutting back, used its advantage as the lowest-cost producer to squeeze out the weaker players. Here's an overview of the industry.

It looks like that when the dust settles, Micron will have about 40% market share, Samsung (S. Korea) about 22%, Elpdata (Japan) somewhere under 20%, and minor players the rest. The era of brutal competition in DRAM may be ending. The number of players is much smaller now. We may see more "stability" in DRAM pricing.

Perceived value of "overpriced apples"

[Infonaut]

One thing I've never understood about the PC-Mac price comparison is this: Ten years ago, $4,000 bought you the computer you really dreamed of, the one that could do "everything". of course, "everything" didn't include high-end digital photography, digital moviemaking, ripping MP3s, or playing the kind of immersive 3D games that are available now.

$2,000 got you the machine you could afford -the one that you could use Office and Quicken on, play most middle-of the road games, and if you were willing to wait a long time, dabble in graphic design and multimedia.

Now the machine you really want still costs $4,000, but the machine you can afford is down to $1,500, and it does far more than even the best home computers did just two or three years ago.

The fact that there are $500 commodity PC boxes available is nice, but does that mean that the $1,500 iMac no longer has value to the person who purchases it?

It seems to me that rather than comparing the prices of PC and Mac CPUs and peripherals, we ought to be comparing overall value to the consumer - i.e., is this machine doing everything I want it to do, for a price that I find worthwhile?

If you love your Mac, but you don't love PCs, there must be more perceived value in the Mac for you. If that's the case, isn't it intrinsically worth more to you than a less expensive PC?