Apple Defends iPad Mini's $329 Price
Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller points to 9-inch iPad's commercial success.
Due to the tablet apparently offering higher quality, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller believes the iPad Mini warrants a higher price tag than its rivals.
Rival 7-inch tablets cost as little as $199, but the iPad Mini will set consumers back $329. However, during an interview with Reuters, Schiller defended the price of the recently unveiled 7.9-inch tablet by saying customers have been shelling out more cash for the 9.7-inch iPad over its competition.
"The iPad is far and away the most successful product in its category. The most affordable product we've made so far was $399 and people were choosing that over those devices," Schiller said. "And now you can get a device that's even more affordable at $329 in this great new form, and I think a lot of customers are going to be very excited about that."
"Others have tried to make tablets smaller than the iPad and they've failed miserably," Schiller said regarding the iPad Mini's thin and light design. "These are not great experiences."
The iPad Mini least-expensive variant is $329 for the 16GB W-Fi version. Rival 7-inch tablets such as Google's Nexus 7, Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.0 sell for $199. While Google's Nexus 7 only comes with 8GB of storage, the Kindle Fire HD sells for the same $199 price and matches the iPad mini's 16GB of storage.
"Others have tried to make tablets smaller than the iPad and they've failed miserably,"
Really, has no one clued this man in on the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire, Galaxy Tab....
You know the tablets that Apple is copying.
Now if this thing had the same specs (or even similar) as the iPad 3 (not the one they just announced), I would say sure. But fairly underpowered CPU and Screen that is way lacking? Come on...
"Others have tried to make tablets smaller than the iPad and they've failed miserably,"
Really, has no one clued this man in on the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire, Galaxy Tab....
You know the tablets that Apple is copying.
Too bad the crazy profit margin is unusable since Apple files their profits away overseas.
True. But I still feel it's overpriced when you compare it to the regular iPad.
Looks like apple knows that consumers are ready to pay more money for their products. No wonder they are overcharging them.
Poor ba$tard, he must have tried really hard to say that with a straight face. Either that, or the part of his brain that ever heard of Amazon's tablets and Nexus 7 was lobotomized before this speech.