MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Is Apple betting the farm on the new iPad (iPad3 or iPadHD or ?)?

azazel1024 · 03-09-2012, 10:03 AM

Unless the BOM is hugely higher than the iPad2's BOM was at release time, Apple was making something on the order of $200 for each iPad 2 sold when they released last spring. I'd imagine the BOM has dropped by at least 10-30% by this point with their economies of scale.

So even on a base Wifi version of the 3rd generation iPad, I bet they are making at LEAST $100 per unit and probably more like $150 per unit initially and it'll probably creep up by another $40-100 over the course of its, expected, 1 year production run before the 4th generation iPad comes out.

I am interested in the iPad gen 3...but not enough to replace my iPad 2. It just isn't significantly improved enough with all my other financial commitments to drop $600-700 on. It would be more because with that high def screen, I'd be loading at least 720p movies on there, which is going to take up enough extra space that the 16GB girl I've got going on now wouldn't be able to cope with much, especially for longer trips away from home. That plus a $100 applecare plus (I've got young kids, it is a miracle to me that they or my wife and I have not broken my ipad or her ipad yet). Figure in at best maybe getting $300 for my iPad 2 16GB Wifi now that the price dropped $100 on new ones and it would probably be roughly $400 to upgrade. Just too much for a much nicer screen (and the iPad2's screen is really nice, if not nearly as high resolution).

Maybe/probably next year with hopefully a lower power Wifi stack and processor with significant processing power upgrades, maybe even better GPU and hopefully lower power consumption either giving longer battery life or allowing Apple to put a smaller capacity battery in the iPad leading to dropping the size and weight more than the new one.

03-09-2012, 10:03 AM	#170
azazel1024 Groupie Posts: 182 Karma: 346596 Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Ellicott City, MD Device: Nook simple touch, iPad 2	Unless the BOM is hugely higher than the iPad2's BOM was at release time, Apple was making something on the order of $200 for each iPad 2 sold when they released last spring. I'd imagine the BOM has dropped by at least 10-30% by this point with their economies of scale. So even on a base Wifi version of the 3rd generation iPad, I bet they are making at LEAST $100 per unit and probably more like $150 per unit initially and it'll probably creep up by another $40-100 over the course of its, expected, 1 year production run before the 4th generation iPad comes out. I am interested in the iPad gen 3...but not enough to replace my iPad 2. It just isn't significantly improved enough with all my other financial commitments to drop $600-700 on. It would be more because with that high def screen, I'd be loading at least 720p movies on there, which is going to take up enough extra space that the 16GB girl I've got going on now wouldn't be able to cope with much, especially for longer trips away from home. That plus a $100 applecare plus (I've got young kids, it is a miracle to me that they or my wife and I have not broken my ipad or her ipad yet). Figure in at best maybe getting $300 for my iPad 2 16GB Wifi now that the price dropped $100 on new ones and it would probably be roughly $400 to upgrade. Just too much for a much nicer screen (and the iPad2's screen is really nice, if not nearly as high resolution). Maybe/probably next year with hopefully a lower power Wifi stack and processor with significant processing power upgrades, maybe even better GPU and hopefully lower power consumption either giving longer battery life or allowing Apple to put a smaller capacity battery in the iPad leading to dropping the size and weight more than the new one.