Compare like for like, man. That's like comparing a Mac Pro to a 250 quid supermarket special.juice wrote:Apple hardware massively expensive as compared to PC clones: iPad: £439. iClone: £80 inc. delivery.
One of these has a 1Ghz Cortex-A8 processor with an OpenGL ES 3 / OpenCL enabled graphics chip, a 10" multitouch screen and 26MB of onchip ram on a 64-bit bus. It has a milled aluminium case and a 10 hour battery life.
The other has a ~200Mhz Arm 9 core with no coprocessor, a 7" resistive single touch touchscreen, and 128MB of memory on a 32 bit bus. It has a shoddy plastic case and a 1.5 hour battery life.
The only things you can realistically compare the iPad to are machines that provide something close to its performance. The £80 clone isn't in the same city, let alone the same ballpark. And for the machines with similar power - the (predicted) prices are similar. The Streak is probably the closest thing out there at the moment, but it's (depending on your outlook) either a fat smartphone or a very small tablet. I disagree with regards to their margins - it's more likely to have close to zero margins on initial release, with expected return coming as demand grows and the design is further refined.
Apps are copyable, yes. The OS is not, and needs to be specially compiled per platform. You need specialised hardware knowledge to build a kernel for any given SoC. That knowledge isn't given by Google, it comes from the SoC manufacturers - if you're using an off the shelf part, you're relying on the manufacturer for your updates. the upshot of this is that the majority of non name-brand android tablets might as well be considered as non-upgradeable and effectively disposable, in the same way that mobile phones are.juice wrote:Windows running on available hardware: it's not a direct parallel, but Android is freely "copyable" across the iClones, whereas the iOS can only be installed on iDevices
Google shoulders the cost of developing the Android layer. The kernel, as I mentioned before, is down to the manufacturers, and they don't have a great deal to gain by having large amounts of manpower tied up in doing kernel development, especially for older parts. Apple already had iPhone OS, and had leveraged a good deal of that from OSX. It comes (largely) for free as far as they are concerned. One update hits multiple platforms, and so on.juice wrote:Android OS cost vs iPhone OS cost: Google shoulders the cost of developing Android: the iClone manufacturers don't pay a penny. Apple has to cover the cost of developing iPhone OS
The "higher build quality" thing is debatable. What isn't debatable is that Apple have a vast amount more purchasing clout than the majority of clone maufacturers for the parts the don't produce "in house". They already have design teams worthy of the name, and so on. Leverage what you have. The clone manufacturers have to largely farm everything out to third parties. I can see Apple having lower overall costs than anyone else, and thus higher margins at the same pricepoint. I'll say it again. I really don't think you'll see anyone significantly undercutting the iPad without compromising usability and build quality.juice wrote:Apple margins vs iClone margins: the iClones use off-the-shelf components, bought in bulk (inc. Android): Apple uses a custom OS, built on custom hardware, to higher build/quality standards. I'd therefore expect Apple to have much higher design/production costs, even before you throw in the infamous Apple tax on top.
You thought the VCS joysticks were bad...
