Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 177 posts

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#41

Post by ugh »

maxawaytoolong wrote: post #10
heiti wrote: post #8

It's a bit disappointing when "the world" and "USA" are used interchangeably. The US market is fairly small. Things are quite different in other places.

The USA is the world's largest consumer goods market, surpassing the next one, Japan, by a factor of 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_market...

That’s interesting but is it also a good reason to use “USA” and “the world” interchangeably?

Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Portugal, Finland, Ireland and Romania combined – all EU member nations – are about equal to the US. They have a larger combined population (about 460 million v. about 310 million) but the USA certainly don’t beat them by a factor of 5 even taking population into account, more like a factor of 1.5.

Oh, and 10 divided by 2.8 is 3.6, not 5.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#43

Post by tibbon »

cheald wrote: post #35
icegreentea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you move up to Dells and Lenovo's "premiere" laptops (Latitudes and Thinkpads), then the price difference narrows considerably. Bare bottom T410 (14") is ~1200 (granted, its currently on sale for like 700-800 dollars... Lenovo has a lot of sales actually). I think it's fair to say that MBPs compete with all of the other brands "one step up" or business lines. MBP build quality alone lets it fight in that categ…

At some point, you're paying a few hundred extra for the aluminum body and glowy Apple logo - it's not just about "premium" versus "consumer" tiers of hardware. A Latitude 5400 (again, same hardware loadout) prices on Dell's website right now at $849.00. A ThinkPad Edge 13", again, similar loadout, prices at $694.00. Apple makes fantastic hardware, no doubt, but it's very difficult to consider them to be competitivel…

I think the body is actually a pretty big deal. Who else is making unibodies like that?

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#44

Post by trotsky »

rimantas wrote: post #16
trotsky wrote: post #6

I see daring fireball has never heard of archos. http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/31/archos-unleashes-five-fiv...

Let's see: I would love to buy a $229 Android device that’s the equivalent of the iPod Touch Which one of the Archos is equivalent to iPod touch?

Well, I had the archos 10" tablet in mind when I made that post.

Archos clearly intends the 4.3" device to compete in the ipod touch space. The fact that it lacks a capacitive screen means it really doesn't, and seems like a mistake. But given Archos' price points ($200 4.3" resistive and $275 7" capacitive) it's hard to believe that component and manufacturing prices would prevent them from shipping a closer mimic.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#45

Post by rchowe »

marze wrote: post #20

Lucky for Apple's competitors they have Android, otherwise they'd really be up a creek. With the hardware volume purchasing advantage combined with the many-year head start they have on the OS, it will be surprising to me if any competitor obtains a 10% market share in the iPad or iPod Touch markets.

I'd argue that if the competitors didn't have Android, the tablets would just run on x86 processors. And run either windows or linux. I believe that the presence of ARM early in this market is actually good on the OS side, because it doesn't lead to shoehorning windows onto a tablet. x86 tablets aren't going to succeed both because of the pressure to run desktop OSes, but also because x86 processor companies only seem to be able to produce and market market clock speed and not what really matters in this case (low power consumption and heat output).

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#46

Post by jon_hendry »

andreyf wrote: post #31
nowarninglabel wrote: post #11

The 2nd paragraph: "Now, even putting quality aside, competitors can’t match Apple’s prices." Does not jive with the prices mentioned later: Apple Ipad - $599/$699 for the 16/32 GB models Samsung Galaxy S - $594 HTC A8181 Desire - $527 I don't know what the author's definition of "match" is, but seems to me Android tablet makers have matched prices quite well. *Edit: fixed my formatting

He's talking about cost of actually building the device. A big part of the iPhone's consumer price ($700 for 32gig) is markup, as he points out in comparing it to the price of the iPod touch, which is $300 for a comprable model. In other words, he's claiming that Apple could undercut the A8181 Desire or the Galaxy S on price, but keeping the customer choose between "FREE* shiny new phone" or "$200* shiny new phone" r…

" as he points out in comparing it to the price of the iPod touch, which is $300 for a comprable model."

But the iPod touch has some corners cut. No anti-oil coating on the screen, for one. It also retains the former body shape, not the flat-glass-on-both-sides iPhone 4 style.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#47

Post by barrkel »

cheald wrote: post #18
_delirium wrote: post #2

I've noticed this even with normal laptops at the smaller end. If you're looking for a 15" laptop, you can find a lot cheaper PCs than the $1,799 MacBook Pro. But if you're looking for a 13" laptop with roughly equivalent processing power and weight, it's hard to find a PC laptop much cheaper than the $1,099 MacBook or $1,199 MacBook Pro. Some are considerably more, because while Apple prices the 13" at the bottom of…

Having just recently priced laptops, I didn't have this experience. A 13" MBP is $1200 for the bare-bones options (4GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, 250GB 5400 RPM SATA). It weighs about 4.5 lbs. They want an additional $400 for an extra 4GB of RAM (wtf?) A Dell Inspiron 14" with the same specs clocks in at $665 at 4.9 lbs (which is still under the 5lb "ultraportable" mark). A Lenovo U350 with similar specs clocks in at $700 and…

FWIW, I'd put the ultraportable mark somewhere closer to 3lb; certainly no more than 1.5kg. My Toshiba Portege (12") is closer to 1.1kg (2.4lb).

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#48

Post by martythemaniak »

marze wrote: post #20

Lucky for Apple's competitors they have Android, otherwise they'd really be up a creek. With the hardware volume purchasing advantage combined with the many-year head start they have on the OS, it will be surprising to me if any competitor obtains a 10% market share in the iPad or iPod Touch markets.

At this point, you should probably remember that Android came out 2 years ago and managed to overtake the iPhone in that short time frame. I highly doubt Apple will have even a plularity (let alone a majority) of the tablet market in 2 years.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#49

Post by mediaman »

sdz wrote: post #13

I think a related part of Apple's pricing advantage comes from the fact that they are good at taking technologies developed for the iPhone and using it in other places instead of reinventing the wheel for every product. The iPod touch, Apple TV, and iPad are all variously stripped, screenless, and scaled versions of the iPhone. They share the same processor and underlying OS. This allows Apple to not just sell a lot…

This reminds me of a quote from Bill Gates, early on in his career, in which he says that Microsoft's business model is "creating variable revenue streams from fixed engineering costs."

Although that's true of many software companies, Apple is proving to be very adept at creating revenue streams across multiple, very different product categories from the same engineering investment.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#50

Post by trotsky »

irons wrote: post #38
trotsky wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim of the article is that apple can price their mobile devices lower than the competition because they benefit from superior supply chains and manufacturing. The fact that google chooses to restrict the market application to OHA member devices with SIM cards doesn't change the fact that archos is delivering products in the same basic hardware class for less money.

You're accusing Gruber of ignoring certain competitive products which, by your own admission, aren't competitive products. The Nook is also in the "same basic hardware class for less money."

Should an article about laptop hardware component pricing only compare hardware costs of machines that come pre-installed with office? He doesn't seem to think so as he compares pc's and macs on average hardware costs but they can't all run osx.
Post reply on HN