Intense Competition Ahead for iPad
31 May 2010 | News | Angela Topchu on Google+
The international launch of the iPad at the weekend is set to be swiftly followed by the release of a raft of rival tablet PCs, costing a fraction of Apple’s $500 device.
But being the first kid on the block with the latest technology has its disadvantages. In addition to being a guinea pig for all the unforeseen glitches, it costs a lot to have the latest model of anything. $500.00 for the most basic iPad is still a nice piece of change. But soon, according to the Financial Times, there will be cheap knockoffs of the iPad coming on the market, some that will sell for as little as $100.oo. The Financial Times reports as follows.
It will be interesting to see what Apple will do to meet the competition. They will continue to have an edge over any device that uses Windows. Many people who switch to Apple computers find higher speed and less glitches.
China is the source of the cheaper innovation, with the shanzhai bandit phonemakers of the grey market moving on to the manufacture of tablets that can use readily available smartphone components.
Chris Wei, senior analyst at Taiwan’s Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute, a government-backed research house, said even a number of mainland Chinese brands that made netbooks are shifting their focus on to tablet PCs this year.
But there will not just be competition on price, Mr Wei says. The iPad is still in its first generation so it still has some some limitations that rivals will improve on, such as by using more powerful hardware components or by supporting Adobe Flash content. A number of tablet PCs that will be shown at this year’s Computex have also been converted from smartbooks using Arm-based processors that were featured heavily at last year’s fair but never made it to retail stores because brands turned conservative about new products during the economic downturn, Mr Wei said.
Some of these tablets, if you take away the outer casing it’s basically a smartbook inside, he said.
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