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How Will Amazon, Barnes & Noble Survive the iPad Mini?
redletterdave writes "For about a year, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble were almost completely alone in the 7-inch tablet market. It was nice while it lasted. The past few months have seen Google and Microsoft unveil their 7-inch tablet offerings — the Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface, respectively — and it looks like Apple is about ready to get into the mini tablet game, too. If Apple releases its first 'iPad Mini' next month, what can Amazon and Barnes & Noble do to keep the Cupertino colossus at bay, as well as the other new competitors in the 7-inch tablet game?"
I get really tired of this frame of stories that assume Apple is the alpha and the omega.
Who cares about a possible iPad Mini that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid already? Just another iOS device, they already come with a range of displays, connectivity, etc. If you have already bought into the iOS ecosystem you might want one, otherwise not so much. What other OEM adding a new screen size would be a major story on /.? Newsflash! Dell adds new display option to their laptop line, discuss.
And for that matter, I don't really care about the Amazon or Nook tablets because they are trying to run the same Apple game plan, poorly. I don't want to semi-buy a tethered device that is more a tethered window into it's owner's cloud than a computer that [I] control. And to a great extent I toss the new Google Nexus 7 (by Asus) into the same pile.
Look around and you can buy tablets in any size, build quality and price that can be unlocked, accept removable media, even boot from that external media. Want one with a keyboard? Yup. Good cameras, sensors, etc. How much ya willing to pay? In other words, tablet computers instead of iPad clones. You can keep your subsidized[1] media players; I'm a nerd and I buy computers.
Just don't expect to buy a computer from a media company and get anything useful. Which is what B&N and Amazon are, Apple is in the process of becoming and Google is greatly desiring to be.
[1] Well not subsidized from Apple of course, there you pay more for the chains... but they are just so stylish!
Democrat delenda est
"The past few months have seen Google and Microsoft unveil their 7-inch tablet offerings — the Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface, respectively"
Nope. Surface is a 10 inch tablet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
And besides, I'm sure Apple will sell a bunch, make money. A half year after that I'm sure stories will appear about a new Samsung, Kindle, or Google tab (or the combination of the three) that will offer something new or just enough of something new to move interest back away from Apple for a while.
Put the focus back where it belongs for their particular devices - Eink.
There are a ton of people who don't want to look at yet another computer screen when they are reading, which is why those people (me included) go for the Eink devices instead of the 7" tablets.
That is the space that made them popular, and that is the space they need to put the focus back on as a differentiating - and positive selling - factor.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
The Kindle hardware is just a channel to sell e-books. If Kindle hardware sales dry up due to competition from other tables, it's not a problem as long as the other devices that people buy support the Kindle App.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
There is no tablet market per se. There's an iPad market, an e-reader market, and a grab bag of every other manufacturer.
The Samsung Tab? Apparently it sold 37k units in the US last quarter, which makes it a total non-competitor to the iPad.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/10/apple-sold-5-7-million-tablets-in-the-u-s-last-quarter-court-documents-show-samsung-sold-37000/
http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/screen-shot-2012-08-10-at-7-33-07-am.png
So anyway, what does it matter? There are Nook and Kindle readers on iOS - that revenue stream should be fine. By not selling the hardware both companies save money, but lose on lock-in. The impact will probably be marginal, or possibly a small plus as more people move to nook/kindle and away from books.
Of course, it depends on the price. If the iPad mini comes out at $199 it's game over for everyone else. I doubt that price point because Apple generally doesn't sell its hardware at a loss or close to a loss. They just need to make it close. $300 sounds more realistic - that's $100 less than the Ipad 2 and overlaps well with the iPad touch pricing.
Amazon and Nook are all about consuming content. Initial tear-downs of the Kindle Fire purported them to be built at a loss, or at the very least, sold "at-cost". The profits are in App sales, Kindle books, Newsstand subscriptions, and Music/Video content.
Thus, if their consumers are running iPad minis, Amazon already has most of that taken care of. There's a Kindle app for iPhone and iPad, and they've recently released the Cloud Player (music) for iPhone and Amazon Instant Video app for iPad. Those loyal to their content will still be consuming it, regardless of the device. Amazon doesn't have a foothold in all facets of iPad like they do in Kindle Fire or other Android devices (i.e. Appstore), but it's "good enough", right?
To a lesser extent, same applies for B&N. NOOK apps are available for both.
Now the risk for both of these companies is those who aren't loyal to a content provider and the default presence of iTunes.
$ man woman *
-bash:
They'll survive because nobody with two brain cells to rub together enjoys reading on a backlit and always-refreshing screen.
Spoken by a person reading slashdot on a "backlit and always-refreshing screen".
Amazon, B&N and all the others will survive because they have E-ink screens, which are far superior (and, sadly, more expensive) for their specialized purpose.
If people wanted a color 7" tablet to do more than just reading, e-readers would have been gone from the market already. The only benefit a dedicated e-reader has over one of those cheap 7" no-name Android tablets is the screen. Even the cheapest Android tablet outperforms an e-reader in every way... except the screen.
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They'll survive because nobody with two brain cells to rub together enjoys reading on a backlit and always-refreshing screen.
Spoken by a person reading slashdot on a "backlit and always-refreshing screen".
There's a big difference between spending 30 minutes browsing the web and spending hours reading an eBook. I always use the eInk Kindle instead of my 7" android tablet for reading a book - it's just easier on my eyes. And while I can browse the web on the Kindle, it's not really the best platform for web browsing so I use the tablet (or my laptop) for that.
The Blackberry Playbook is a 7" tablet and has been on the market for over a year now. How come it is never mentioned? I mean, it had it's flaws when first released but has been patched up for the most part now. When the playbook was first released everybody was saying 7" was too small for a tablet. Amazon, Google have each released their 7" and now Apple has been rumored to release a smaller version of the iPad and all of a sudden the 7" is the sweet spot?
Most Apple customers these days aren't part of the fanbase. They're just regular people lately.
Tablet computers are becoming a commodity. A 7" tablet from China is only $70. On Amazon, you can now get Android tablets from $60. Since the Allwinner ARM system on a chip came out for $7, with no US intellectual property to run up the price, the compute power in low-end tablets has been quite impressive. Tablet computers are going to be something you buy in a blister pack at the convenience store.
How will Apple, with all their expensive stores on expensive real estate, and a business built on huge markups, deal with that? Their pricing is around $400, over five times the price of the competition. They can't maintain that margin.
There's a market for luxury items. The CEO of Rolex says "We are not in the watch business, we are in the luxury business. The volumes are small. Apple is too big a company to take that route. Apple may have to try coming out with lower-priced lines to compete.
No, it's not. Books - especially fiction books - are 99% text with the most basic layout possible, and minimal typesetting differences throughout the book. Your typical website has a far more complicated layout and typesetting requirements, often uses color, and generally requires scrolling (rather than page flipping) to conveniently read. Not to mention the whole interactive angle with clicking links; books only have an occasional footnote.
Microsoft Surface is not a 7" device...
I get really tired of this frame of stories that assume Apple is the alpha and the omega.
When you start out like that you just look uninformed.
The fact is you should care if Apple is entering a niche because it means that other options may well dry up.
I don't really care about the Amazon or Nook tablets because they are trying to run the same Apple game plan, poorly
Poorly? Both seem to have done really well. Amazon has a tablet that lets people easily hook into the benefits of the media Amazon provides, and they have done a good job of selling devices.
I don't want to semi-buy a tethered device that is more a tethered window into it's owner's cloud than a computer that [I] control.
All of these tablets are computers you can easily control. Why then ignore the very real benefits that derive from the tablet maker also offering a hook into convenient cloud services?
iCloud will happily back up a jailbroken iPad as easily as a non-jailbroken iPad...
In other words, tablet computers instead of iPad clones. You can keep your subsidized[1] media players; I'm a nerd and I buy computers.
You claim you are a nerd, yet you discard the best hardware on the market (not just Apple), hardware that as you admit is perhaps cheaper through subsidization - that you don't even have to use!
A true nerd doesn't care what features a device ships with, just how much control they have over a device and what the hardware is. The iPad is as controllable a device as anything after jailbreaking - which even non-nerds can do, yet it seems to be too intimidating for you.
Weak sauce man. If you want be a nerd or hacker, be that - but don't proclaim some hardware is beyond your nerd-love simply because of extra features targeting the masses that you don't even have to activate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whether you're strolling on a sidewalk in a city, or climbing a narrow mountain during hike, you are fundamentally walking, so these are exactly the same thing - and clearly dress shoes are the most convenient form of footwear for both.
e.g. by putting out reader applicaitons for all platforms and making money on sellign the books, as they already do now. I would never buy the kindle (since dont like to pay somebody money for playing the gatekeeper to what i can watch on *my* device), but since Amazon makes my purchases available on my android via the kindle app, my xp machine, and (even for offline reading) in the web browser, i am not exacltly sure *why* amazon should be worried about the 7 inch ipad. I spend more for ebooks in the last year (since i use the kindle app) than for books in the 5 years before.
The ipad 7 inch is an device which apple hestitated to produce and enters the market as one of the last big players (the same for the surface thing). Pocket-compatible ebook reader have been arund a long time, and the load of android devices in all different shapes, formats and price ranges makes the 7 inch ipad appear like a drop of water in the sea.
The more relevant question is: Is apple navigating itself in a position of "we against the rest" with a high fence around the garden? Again? A little lesson in the History of Apple should teach that they made this mistake one time before. In the 90s they were had the monopoly in the DTP and creative market. Until they managed to annoy their customers a few years too long by keeping the same feature set and relying on the market monopoly. At that time the logics was: If you do DTP, you need an Apple, sicne the print shops only guarantee the result if you deliver your product as a mac format. If you open a print shop, you need a Apple because the customer has Apple. Bot have an Apple, so the colour calibration chain (which indeed worked better in the beginning on the Apples than on Windows) will guarantee that you know what you print. Nowadays the logics is: Apple controls a significant share of mp3 sales, media sales, so if you want to read a digital newspaper, you need an ipad. Since people reading digital newspapers own ipads, if you make a newspaper you need to publish for the ipad.
What happened in the 90s: Windows go better and betetr and chraper and cheaper and a so big overall market share that it put apple under pressure
What happens now: Android gets better and betetr and cheaper and cheaper and Apple has no monoply on the ebook, mp3 market or anything close. So the customers are essentially people who baought an ipod, upgraded to iphone and asrrive at the ipad now. I dont know many people who bought ipad which did not own iphones before.
So that leaves the question: Will Apple show an innovation (besides putting out an ipod in another size) which attract new cistomers or did they corner themself already?
They'll survive because nobody with two brain cells to rub together enjoys reading on a backlit and always-refreshing screen.
You do realize, of course, that active-matrix LCDs (like the IPS panels used in ALL Apple products) do not "flicker" (like the unavoidable consequence of "always-refreshing" CRTs).
Flicker in LCDs does NOT come from "refresh"; but rather from asymmetric-drive signals. Modern LCDs have hardware compensation for this. Hence, they don't flicker. At all.
This is why reading text on an LCD is much less fatiguing than reading it on, say, a CRT. e-Ink displays are also "comfortable" for this same reason; but that's not the point: The point is that properly-designed active-matrix LCDs don't flicker any more than e-Ink displays, at least as far as human eyes are concerned. And until the U.N. Non-Human Rights Treaty passes in 2030, we don't have to worry about making displays tuned to horses, dogs, cats and pigs.
They'll survive because nobody with two brain cells to rub together enjoys reading on a backlit and always-refreshing screen.
Spoken by a person reading slashdot on a "backlit and always-refreshing screen".
There's a big difference between spending 30 minutes browsing the web and spending hours reading an eBook. I always use the eInk Kindle instead of my 7" android tablet for reading a book - it's just easier on my eyes. And while I can browse the web on the Kindle, it's not really the best platform for web browsing so I use the tablet (or my laptop) for that.
People that feel their tablet is "fatiguing" to read for long periods generally have their backlight adjusted incorrectly (usually too bright). I know my iPad 2 has enough backlight to make my irises squinch shut on a predominantly-white page in normal home-level lighting. Of course that's going to be fatiguing after a few hours; because your irises are relaxed when open (why people's eyes dilate when they die). You can duplicate this effect by trying to read a dead-tree book in bright sunlight. After awhile, you just want to run screaming...
/. readers, who probably spend far more than average times staring at a display that is essentially in the same focus-plane for hours at a stretch...
So, try adjusting the brightness of your tablet such that, when looking around the room, then looking at the screen, your don't feel your eyes "adjusting" too much. Then see if that doesn't tame that "backlight fatigue" when reading/browsing.
Also, give your eyes a little exercise by deliberately changing the focus-plane (looking around the room) every few minutes. Even a few seconds makes a big difference. I know this isn't news; but it bears repeating.
But I shouldn't have to tell that to an audience of
People have been saying that about Apple since Apple existed. They have come out with a few lower priced things over the years, but those products came and went while the expensive stuff remained.
There's a market for luxury items. The CEO of Rolex says "We are not in the watch business, we are in the luxury business. The volumes are small. Apple is too big a company to take that route. Apple may have to try coming out with lower-priced lines to compete.
You have a good point, and I used to think the same, but consider that Apple has been selling high-priced laptops for over a decade, despite the emergence of $350 laptops, they still manage to sell them for $2000+. Not only do they sell them, their marketshare is increasing. I don't claim to understand HOW they do this, but they do. And so far, they've managed to keep selling iPads for some reason, too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
For that matter, it blows away the iPad as well. After using it for a week, going back to iOS feels like going back in time. The Nexus is easier to use, more flexible, more responsive and it just plain feels slicker. I suspect an honest comparison between an iPad mini and the Nexus won't come up too well for the iPad. I'm sure it will still be bought in droves by the faithful, but Apple's been passed by Google.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The medium of eInk is completely different than an LED type display. eInk is damn good for a page turning book, as in a novel or something where you read the pages slowly and in order. eInk is terrible for skimming where you flick back and fourth or where the data is highly formatted such as a textbook.
LED is awesome for stuff you read quickly such as video (many frames per second) a web page, twitter, facebook, etc. But even then the size determines what you will read. A larger screen (iPad or bigger) is good for skimming a textbook, or a magazine. I don't want to read a magazine or textbook on a 7 inch screen. Even though the screen is book size and the weight will be more book like I suspect that people will not want to read 50 shades of stupid on a smaller iPad. So that basically leaves it to be used for games, video, and other things that you would do with a really big phone.
I would say that the revolutionary size would be to bump up the normal iPad so that it doesn't have that huge bezel and a genuine 10+ inch screen; at least the size of a National Geographic. Then I can really do the textbook/magazine thing really well.
The revolutionary thing to do with eInk would be to make it way tougher (2 dead kindles in this house) and keep making it crisper. I am not sure that colour is even that important. Colour might make it easier to sell in Staples but only if it doesn't come at the expense of lightness/crispness/cost/ or battery. I wouldn't mind the screen being a notch bigger but at most another inch.
Assuming they actually do release it (has anything official been announced yet?), Apple is going to have a hard time setting a good price for the iPad Mini.
The Nook Tablet, Kindle Fire, and Nexus 7 all start at $199. Therefore, Apple won't be able to price the iPad Mini much more than $250 unless they want to be seriously beat out on price by A-list competitors. It's one thing to be beaten on price by bottom-of-the-barrel crap like Archos, but until now, the iPad has been quite competitive on price with equivalently powerful systems from A-list vendors such as Samsung. No other 10-inch tablet provides equal performance to the iPad at a substantially cheaper price. In fact, no consumer tablet at any price can beat the iPad 3's display resolution. Apple's success comes not only from providing a slicker product, but also from the fact that they've pretty much abolished the "Apple tax" on portable hardware, and used their supply chain dominance to leverage prices way down.
At the same time, Apple can't sell the iPad Mini for much cheaper than the iPad 2 ($399), because if they do, it will cost them a substantial number of sales on the better hardware. A lot of tablet users would gladly drop from 10 inches to 7 inches to save $150, if the user experience is otherwise the same. Apple doesn't want to cannibalize its own profit margins on their high-end tablets.
I'm sure their marketers have crunched all the numbers. My prediction: if the iPad Mini does see production, it will start at $249 or $299 for the cheapest model. Just low enough to lure over a decent number of Nexus/Kindle/Nook users, just high enough to keep the iPad 2 competitive. Also, the screen resolution will be 1024x768.
And there are cheaper music players than iPods, and cheaper laptops than MacBooks, and yet somehow Apple has turned into the biggest company on the planet than isn't a bank or oil concern. Apple is selling more and more computers, phones, and tablets year over year, every year. (The only thing that's going down is their iPod sales because everyone's buying iPhones instead.) The whole market is growing--people are buying tablets who never bought computers, and cell phones are literally going to hit the points where 99% of the PLANET owns one. (Did you know their iPhone business--something that didn't even exist five years ago--is bigger than the entirety of Microsoft?)
Apple is not a niche, small-volume luxury company like Rolex. You're comparing a multi-hundred dollar, multi-feature device to a multi-thousand dollar, single-function device--of course Rolex is going to have orders of magnitude less volume.
I always laugh when posts like yours get high "Insightful" mods. You're cherry-picking all these little facts here and there while ignoring the hundred-billion-dollar elephant in the room.
> How will Apple, with all their expensive stores on
> expensive real estate, and a business built on
> huge markups, deal with that?
LOL. Have you ever heard "you've got to spend money to make money"? Apple retail stores have the highest profit per square foot ratio of any retail chain by a HUGE margin. (Almost 2x higher than #2, Tiffany.) And it's been like that for five years.
Also: you really think all these companies with razor-thin margins are going to thrive in Apple's place? You can ask Dell how well that strategy worked for them long-term. And have you ever used a generic tablet? I have, and they all suck in every way you can imagine. Apple's resources give them the ability to make things people actually want.
I'm not saying Apple will reign forever, but it will take them a LONG time to fall.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Or, just buy a Nexus 7 and install the Kindle reading app. And, if you want REALLY open, download the one-click windows app to unlock and root it.
Another US-centric story I see. Here in the UK, the story reads to me as "unreleased Kindle Fire and unreleased Nook Color vs. rumoured unreleased iPad Mini and unreleased MS Surface and - shock horror - released Nexus 7". In other words, a pretty useless story for non-US citizens - please try harder next time. Oh, and yes, I have a Nexus 7 because that *has* been released outside the US and is therefore the default 7" tablet winner in my books.