News - Apple missing out on $63 billion in sub-$1000 notebook market?

[HEXUS]

JP Morgan believes an iOS tablet-laptop hybrid could eat away at Windows PC market.

Read more.

[jim]

Problem is, they don't really do budget versions of their kit, and I think that adds a lot to the brand.

Sure, they could sell more if they had lower price laptops, but the same goes for the iPhone (I don't think the 5c was cheap enough to count). Question is, would that suddenly start to damage the perception of the rest of their gear, and hurt the profitability of that in the long run?

Corsair have done this, starting with premium cases and PSUs, and later expanding coverage to the whole market. They still have a reputation as a quality brand, but it's at risk when poor reviews of the low-end gear comes in. Would Apple want to risk a similar strategy?

It's a wider question than "you could start selling to this market".

[Stenotherm]

This is a very naive argument and completely ignores a large part of why Apple are successful. Making cheaper (and potentially poorer) products will harm their image. Just look at their plastic iPhones. Best case scenario is 63 billion; I think it would be substantially less. Stick to making high quality products. Regardless, couldn't the iPad + a keyboard from e.g. Logitech be seen as a notebook of sorts?

[DanceswithUnix]

It can be done. Asus spawned Asrock because they didn't want low end product eating their at the time high end brand.

So they buy out some ailing PC maker, and license them to make low end Apple compatible kit.

[crossy]

If the Asus Transformer team are reading that report they must be laughing their heads off, either that, or yelling at their PHB "see... we told you we'd got it right!"

Making cheaper (and potentially poorer) products will harm their [Apple's] image.

Agree 100%, after all if they start to lose that halo of being "exclusive" then why not just buy something as technically capable, but cheaper? iFans consistently tell me that they want that "special" feeling, that you don't get with mundane Galaxy's, Nexus', etc.

Regardless, couldn't the iPad + a keyboard from e.g. Logitech be seen as a notebook of sorts?

Not really - it's a bodge. What you want is a proper setup - not something kludged together via Bluetooth. So that means a proper physical connection - effectively a keyboard dock. (Apologies if Logitech do actually have a docked/non-BT keyboard for the iPad - not being an iPad owner it's not something that I keep track of).
I've also been spoiled by the likes of the Nokia Power Keyboard, and of course the Asus Transformers, into thinking that secondary battery capability in your "keyboard dock" - along with USB ports are "must haves". Battery to give you that "working day" running time, and those USB ports because not everyone is going to have access to cloud-storage.

And yes, Apple could - and arguably could - do an iPad "convertible". A device that was up against Ultrabooks and therefore priced a level above the "normal" iPads. What would be VERY interesting to me (from a curiosity point of view) would be if there was an "iPad Mini Convertible" positioned to go up against netbooks.

[dcwt2010]

Apple already have one of the highest profit margins and revenues in the world for a tech company, why would they want or need to change that formula? Idiocy...

[DanceswithUnix]

And yes, Apple could - and arguably could - do an iPad "convertible". A device that was up against Ultrabooks and therefore priced a level above the "normal" iPads. What would be VERY interesting to me (from a curiosity point of view) would be if there was an "iPad Mini Convertible" positioned to go up against netbooks.

I think they are best placed to do it. Plenty of history of Apple switching instruction set in their Mac line, nothing stopping them from running the full blown desktop OS on their 64 bit ARM chip.

Undock the screen, it is an ipad, dock with the keyboard it is a laptop. That is quite compelling to the point of bleeding obvious, but no-one seems to have made a successful product yet.

Microsoft could have done it with RT, except they have lost so much respect with their phone OS that no-one wants to touch them on ARM and you can't squeeze windows onto a £100 tablet.
Google have the opposite problem, they have the tablet environment but who wants to convert to a Chrome OS laptop? Converting to a Windows PC would work, but both MIcrosoft and Google hate that idea.

Apple already have one of the highest profit margins and revenues in the world for a tech company, why would they want or need to change that formula? Idiocy...

Because that works until the technology becomes commodity. Then they are just another music company.

[shaithis]

This is a very naive argument and completely ignores a large part of why Apple are successful. Making cheaper (and potentially poorer) products will harm their image.

But some of the iPhones they have released have been broken. Did that hurt their image? No. Most people who buy Apple haven't a clue.....the rest buy their stuff either because it looks "swish" or because they are Apple fanatics.

I've a couple of friends who work tech support for mobile operators.......they used to complain constantly about Blackberry, these days it's just Apple.

[crossy]

Undock the screen, it is an ipad, dock with the keyboard it is a laptop. That is quite compelling to the point of bleeding obvious, but no-one seems to have made a successful product yet. Microsoft could have done it with RT, except they have lost so much respect with their phone OS that no-one wants to touch them on ARM and you can't squeeze windows onto a £100 tablet.

"successful product"? Hmm, closest we've got is STILL the Asus Transformer imho. Problem with that is that it's "limited" to whatever functions you can get via Android, so no chance of running those specialised Wintel-only apps that everyone seems to absolutely need. That said, if all you want to do is the usual mail+web plus a bit of Office then it's definitely doable.

Microsoft DID have a possibility with the Surface, but then screwed it up with daft pricing on launch. That said, el missus got a present of a Nokia 2520 (2nd Gen RT tablet) and it's good enough to replace a lot of her laptop use. With a proper keyboard (Nokia Power Keyboard) those "edge cases" for laptop use are going to fall even further.

We could have had dual-booting Android/Windows tablet/netbook hybrids if it wasn't for the monumental combined stupidity and shortsightedness of Google and Microsoft. In which case here's one person that wishes Apple DID do an iOS notebook, just to light a fire under GoogleSoft!

[DanceswithUnix]

"successful product"? Hmm, closest we've got is STILL the Asus Transformer imho.

Just android though, which I think just isn't a desktop class OS so the keyboard whilst useful doesn't make it a laptop no matter how good the hardware is.

There was rumour when Google bought Motorola that they would be picking up the Motorola docking tech and running with it, so Android 5 would have a desktop mode. And that is what I am looking for, how you work on a desktop is different to a tablet, I want a different environment when I dock to reflect the different usage.

If my phone could fire up KDE desktop using the hdmi as a second desktop screen (leaving the android screen as is on the phone screen) and USB ports to dock for keyboard, mouse and power then that would be stonking. Really, how hard can that be? Just not Gnome, please god not Gnome.

[scaryjim]

Motorola Atrix was very nearly my phone of choice last time just because I *want* a single computing device that follows me everywhere, adapting its interface to my usage pattern. Nearest I've seen to a hybrid device so far is .... Blackberry Q5. Seriously, it's a good device, and while it's genuinely a mobile phone, the physical keyboard and BB10 OS actually make it better for productivity than my playbook (and indeed any other tablet I've ever used). The only thing it's really lacking is an HDMI out - being able to run videos off the PB to a projector was a real boon a couple of times in my last job (and while it can miracast, it's just not the same ).

Windows 8 should be able to do this. Metro is a fairly nice tablet OS, and a configurable multi-mode solution - where it uses Metro when undocked and desktop + windowed metro apps when docked - shouldn't be beyond Microsoft's capabilities. Perhaps that's why they're not keen on dual-OS devices: they reckon they can get their own share of the pie. I've played with Android x86 on a desktop set up and it's passable as a desktop OS but not excellent. The killer device for all situations still isn't out there, I'm afraid...

[crossy]

Just android though, which I think just isn't a desktop class OS so the keyboard whilst useful doesn't make it a laptop no matter how good the hardware is.

Don't forget that Asus extended Android, so there was proper support for the keyboard and trackpad - even down to little things like being able shift-cursor to select, or ^C/^V shortcuts. So that left the only real shortfall being that of limited to Android, and you aren't going to be able to get around that on something with an ARM chip at it's heart.

Biggest problem was that even Docs2Go wasn't really that suitable as a replacement for Word, etc - what's needed is something like a port of LibreOffice.

EDIT: just discovered that the ODF are actually working on this!

No, so in the absence of an Android-based solution, you're left with WindowsRT. And I've got to admit (grudgingly) that this seems to get better every time I look at it. And of course that DOES have real Outlook, Word, Excel etc.

Getting back to the original thread - of course this is the problem that any iOS "laptop" would have too - lack of support for "desktop" apps. And of course, Apples huge app store wouldn't be it's usual advantage here.

[crossy]

Wow another analyst who simply doesn't 'get' Apple. Apple isn't after market share. They couldn't care less about other companies making billions in low margin areas by selling mediocre machines.

Sorry, you're just being ridiculous now. Apple definitely IS after market share, if not then why do you think that they're continually sic'ing their legal attack dogs on Samsung. If those legal moves were truly about "IP protection" then they'd be after others like HTC and especially Google themselves. If Tim Cook was to come out and say "I'm not real bothered by a fall in market share" then the investors would have him ousted so fast there'd be burn marks on the carpet.

Sure Apple could release a laptop that runs iOS. So you'll have a touch based OS running on a machine that needs a WIMP environment. It would fragment their OSs further and be seven shades of pants. Or they could release a cut price Macbook that either gives a poor experience or eats into the highly profitable existing Macbook range... probably both.

Hmm, less easy to refute - depending on your definition of "laptop". To me at least the line between docked-tablet and laptop is getting increasingly blurry, unless we're going to adopt a simplistic "laptops have to be x86/x64" approach. As to fragmenting iOS, I'll suggest that external keyboard and pointing device support is something that could be argued to be useful for iPad, and maybe you can "get away" with not doing a multi-window environment. I've tried Samsung's implementation and while it's okay, it's a bit cramped on your typical 10" screen.

So basically, a budget laptop (especially running a modified version of iOS) is a terrible idea for Apple and doesn't provide anything of value to the consumer. And we'll ignore this analyst who clearly knows nothing about tech, and how he's suggesting that an ARM based CPU is a good fit for a Macbook without mentioning that IT WONT RUN OSX APPS! (Sure they could put in a virtulisation layer but that is such a bad idea)

A budget MacBook might be a good idea - getting folks into the OS X environment at a lower price point - do we all need those expensive chassis's? Similarly I'll argue hard for some kind of "Business Dock" for the iPad's - the number of people I see pecking away on awful 3rd party Bluetooth keyboards on their iPads is quite large. But is an iPad+Business_Dock the same as a laptop? I don't know for sure, and I'm open to arguments to the contrary.

These analyst types come up with this sort of crap all the time. 'Apple should be selling budget phones as that's where the growth is' 'Apple should be selling budget laptops as people buy them'... 'Apple should be selling fruit and veg as people need to eat'. Move on people. And Hexus, up your game. Why not add commentary as to whether these suggests make sense? Talk about them. Again this is another Hexus 'copy and paste' article.

Ah, a point of agreement. You're right - any analyst that says "Apple HAS to pitch for the budget end of the market" is not one that I'd listen to. Heck, even in the pre-Macintosh days an Apple computer was a "halo" product. As someone of my acquaintance said "a Samsung device is what you buy if you want a thing, but an Apple one is 'something'". Hard to disagree with that assessment on a purely marketing basis - anyone want an "iPhone 5S Lite"? No, didn't think so.

Hexus commentary - agree too, it'd be nice to hear more than just a press release. Then again, there's enough opinions out there in the Hexus readership!

[Butuz]

But apple are already into the Sub $1000 market with the $999 MacBook air?

Butuz