Thread: iPad-Mini Rumor
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Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2012-04-26, 21:01

Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post
7" tablets don't sell huh?

http://9to5mac.com/2012/04/26/kindle...nilla_comments

Guess we can lay that one to rest.
So... about six or seven million then?

"7" tablets don't sell huh?" is a straw man argument, I don't believe that anyone against the iPad mini as taken that position. Of course 7" tablets sell.

The question is why they sell. Is it because 7" is a popular size, or because they tend to be cheap? I say that it's because they tend to be cheap, so stating that a $199 7" tablet sold 7 million units is in line with my own expectations.

Second, this means that Amazon has sold 7 million Kindle fires in the time it took Apple to sell ~25 million iPads. Despite costing $300 less. This does not exactly scream "popular" to me. If 7" tablets are genuinely as desirable as 10" tablets... why wasn't this number a lot higher? I wouldn't be putting anything to rest just yet.

In fact, this seems to be pretty solid confirmation that the market at large sees 7" tablets as a compromise. The more than twice as expensive iPad sold more than three times as many units in the same timeframe. This is obviously just my opinion, but if there is genuine pent up demand for 7" tablets, Amazon should have moved a lot more than 7 million units.

Lets see what happens when the 10" Fire comes out. That will be the nail in the coffin for this debate, and then you can "lay this one to rest." Same product, same ecosystem, presumably a similar sub-iPad price. (My guess is $299.) Then and only then will we be able to draw meaningful data from this comparison.

Is there demand for 7" tablets? Yes. Is there enough demand for Apple to go after it? No, I don't think so. To me, it doesn't seem to fit Apple's focused ethos.

On a related note: I know a few girls with iPads and they fit in their purses just fine. But then maybe they just consciously bought a purse big enough for their iPad. I don't know how purses work. My girlfriend has a bunch. What seems to be her main purse can fit the her iPad, but she occasionally has a smaller one which can't fit an iPad. (But it couldn't fit a Kindle fire, either.)

Honestly, until reading capella's post, I thought purses had unlimited internal space. I'm pretty sure my girlfriend's purse leads to hammerspace.


Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.

Last edited by Kraetos : 2012-04-27 at 12:40.