The tablet market has been wary since Amazon introduced its new Kindle Fire tablet, which sported a great design, a touch screen and runs Android. But the thing that made it great was the price. Costumers could go online and purchase Amazon Kindle Fire for just $199.
Barnes&Nobles immediately picked up the trend and released a $249 tablet aimed at the moderately wealthy segment of the public. Now voices whisper that Apple should do the same and revise its strategy concerning the iPad 2. Otherwise competitors would really pose a big challenge. But this argument doesn’t seem to hold. Even if the iPad 2 is priced at $499 and there’s no evidence that a price cut would benefit the sales of an already popular device.Here’s a list of reasons why:
1. Current sales are strong – the iPad 2 doesn’t just sit on the shelves and get bored. So what if it’s a little pricey, the device is seemingly selling exceedingly well at retail.
2. The iPad will still be more expensive than Kindle – it would be impossible for Apple to drop the price all the way to $199, so therefore there’s no point in reducing the price if you’re still ending up with the more expensive version.
3. There will be others – if Apple decides to go for a major move like that, all competitors will follow the idea eventually.
4. There’s no indication yet that Kindle Fire is going to be big, so Apple should just sit back and wait to see what happens. Kindle’s predecessors haven’t managed to score on market success yet.
5. Android still has to prove itself – Android might be increasingly popular as an operating system for iPhones but iPads are not exactly the same thing.
6. Apple’s is one of the strongest brands out there – everything the company has ever put out has been a major smash hit, so that might mean that if Apple decided tomorrow to make the iPad and sell for $1,000, it will still be sold-out.
7. It’s important to know what other tablets are missing. For example, RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook lacks native email and messaging applications and the Kindle Fire only sports 8GB of storage.
8. The iPad 3 is on its way – Apple is probably going to launch a new iPad in the upcoming months so costumers will witness iPad 2 prices dropping in order to make room for its advanced brother.
9. Enterprises buy them, and that’s a good enough reason to leave the price the same.
10. It’s not really the price after all. If you look from a enterprise’s or a gadget lover’s point of view, well the iPad is a brilliant portable computer that can be worked in numerous ways and is priced relatively low.
