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You might well be right on the iPad, the $200 Android tablets mentioned in this blog post are probably total crap. But the iPhone is clearly priced at a premium

by jsnell 16y ago

You might well be right on the iPad, the $200 Android tablets mentioned in this blog post are probably total crap. But the iPhone is clearly priced at a premium, 20-30% more than the models with comparable hardware from other phone manufacturers. Note that I'm not complaining. Apple is free to price their goods however they want, and if they can price the iPhone at a massive premium and still sell tons, that's great for them. I'm sure other phone makers would love to have similar margins.

riobard 16y ago
I hate to say this, but it seems common to compare price based on the hardware alone. Good software and good design cost money too. A lot of money. You pay for the development, testing, and design of all the prototypes discarded before the one you get. Android phone vendors save a lot on the development of the system because Google and many others paid for it. And frankly, based on the make of the majority of Android phones, I don't think they spend as much as Apple on the design part either. That might explain the 20~30% "premium". You get what you paid for.
- jsnell 16y ago
  I don't understand why you're putting scare-quotes around '"premium"'. Apple do a lot of things very well, have a great brand, and unlike most of their competitors haven't been totally commoditized. That allows them to sell the iPhone and Macs at a high premium compared to the competitors. As a result they are ridiculously profitable while most other phone and PC manufacturers range from making a loss to making a modest profit. (And actually Apple spends stunningly little on R&D compared to it's peers. There was a rather nice graph about this that I can't find, but e.g. Microsoft and Nokia spend an order of magnitude more on R&D than Apple does, while seemingly getting just a fraction of the results.)
  - riobard 16y ago
    I put the quotes around premium 'cause I don't really feel Apple charges unfairly for its products. The software and design is worth every penny of that extra 20%~30%. My take on the R&D thing: Yes Apple is likely to be the largest tech company to spend least on R&D, but they have a much smaller range of products and market share to recover that cost. Also I was talking about the smart phone for that. Nokia and Microsoft don't make Android phones. They cannot take the free ride on Google.

by jsnell 16y ago

riobard 16y ago

I hate to say this, but it seems common to compare price based on the hardware alone. Good software and good design cost money too. A lot of money. You pay for the development, testing, and design of all the prototypes discarded before the one you get. Android phone vendors save a lot on the development of the system because Google and many others paid for it. And frankly, based on the make of the majority of Android phones, I don't think they spend as much as Apple on the design part either. That might explain the 20~30% "premium". You get what you paid for.

jsnell 16y ago
I don't understand why you're putting scare-quotes around '"premium"'. Apple do a lot of things very well, have a great brand, and unlike most of their competitors haven't been totally commoditized. That allows them to sell the iPhone and Macs at a high premium compared to the competitors. As a result they are ridiculously profitable while most other phone and PC manufacturers range from making a loss to making a modest profit. (And actually Apple spends stunningly little on R&D compared to it's peers. There was a rather nice graph about this that I can't find, but e.g. Microsoft and Nokia spend an order of magnitude more on R&D than Apple does, while seemingly getting just a fraction of the results.)
- riobard 16y ago
  I put the quotes around premium 'cause I don't really feel Apple charges unfairly for its products. The software and design is worth every penny of that extra 20%~30%. My take on the R&D thing: Yes Apple is likely to be the largest tech company to spend least on R&D, but they have a much smaller range of products and market share to recover that cost. Also I was talking about the smart phone for that. Nokia and Microsoft don't make Android phones. They cannot take the free ride on Google.