xoom

Apple's winning strategy: Lower prices

In the past, Apple had always been seen as a company selling niche, high-quality products at high prices. In recent years, however, it's captured business by keeping costs more competitive.

The company's lower price strategy applies not just to its iPhone and iPad products, but also to the MacBook Air--all have been able to meet or beat the prices offered by some of its rivals, according to an analysis in yesterday's New York Times. But Apple also keeps its own internal costs down by locking in prices on huge amounts of hardware components through multi-year deals with … Read more

In tablets, Android's star is rising but...

In the wake of a new report, are Android tablets now a serious threat to Apple's iPad? The quick answer is maybe, if Amazon Kindle Fire shipments pan out as expected.

Let's first look at the report (see chart below) that came out Friday from Strategy Analytics.

While Apple iPad shipments are way up year to year (to 11.1 million from 4.2 million), Android's growth is huge (to 4.5 million from 0.1 million).

That said, there are legitimate questions about whether we're comparing apples to oranges (pun intended). Virtually all of Apple'… Read more

Best Buy exclusive: Motorola Xoom Family Edition

Best Buy and Motorola announced today that the retail chain will sell a special edition of the Honeycomb-powered Xoom tablet.

Making its debut this coming Sunday, October 16, the Motorola Xoom Family Edition will be available exclusively through Best Buy and a limited-time $379.99 price tag. Specifications are nearly identical to the original Xoom, save for the software experience. … Read more

Polycom brings videoconferencing to iPad, Android tablets

Polycom today unveiled a new videoconferencing application, RealPresence Mobile, that will run on the iPad 2 and Android tablets.

The app runs on Polycom's RealPresence platform, which runs its standard videoconferencing rooms and terminals that include larger high-definition televisions and speaker systems. The idea is to encourage even more videoconferencing use by enabling the tablets to talk with the larger videoconference rooms.

Polycom is looking to play a bigger part in the white-hot mobile space, branching out from the videoconferencing rooms and audio equipment that make up its bread-and-butter business. Its main rival, Cisco Systems, has a number of … Read more

Amazon, RIM tablets look alike--that's where it ends

The Kindle Fire looks strikingly like the poor-selling liquidation-prone tablet from RIM. But that won't stop the Fire from flying out of Amazon's warehouses.

Analysts I talked to this week have a common forecast. Amazon will sell millions of the Kindle Fire tablet soon after it becomes available on November 15. Easily beating other Android tablet rivals in sales volume. And crushing its doppelganger, RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook.

In fact, the only thing possibly holding back Amazon from selling 4 million tablets (the high end of analysts' forecasts) in the months after the Fire becomes available is component … Read more

Get a Chumby 8 digital frame for $129

It started with August's $99 HP TouchPad and culminated with yesterday's $199 Amazon Kindle Fire, but suddenly the tablet deals are everywhere. (Well, not everywhere--cough, Apple store, cough.)

For example, today only, and while supplies last, Woot has the refurbished 32GB Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi 10.1-inch tablet for $349.99, plus $5 for shipping. Price just a couple months ago: $600.

Meanwhile, the 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook is now selling for $299.99 at retailers like Best Buy (where it's currently backordered, interestingly). Days earlier, it was $499.99. Of course, unless you need built-in cameras, I can't see choosing that over the Kindle Fire.… Read more

Amazon Kindle lights Fire under Android, RIM

The $199 Amazon Kindle Fire is expected to put pricing heat on tablet market. And it's not just the iPad that will feel the pressure, according to an analyst and a cost analysis report today.

"It establishes a new price point for the low to mid-range tablet. Apple will likely have to respond," Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw, said in a phone interview.

A report today from UMB TechInsights says Amazon will make a profit on hardware sales of its Kindle Fire "but probably only a third to a quarter as much as the Apple iPad and [BlackBerry] Playbook," according to estimates from TechInsights that show the Kindle Fire's bill of materials at $150.

That kind of profit margin loss-leader stance "can be viewed as a major blow to all Android tablet manufacturers who really have no way to compete since the channel mark-up would require [that] companies put their tablets at or below cost to beat the Kindle Fire price--and they still all lack the content that the Amazon storefront has," according to the report, citing Jeffrey Brown, vice president of business intelligence at TechInsights. … Read more

Motorola Xoom to get 4G LTE upgrade

For the Motorola Xoom tablet, it's better late than never.

Verizon Wireless said it would begin selling the 4G LTE version of the tablet starting tomorrow. The product will sell for $499.99 with a two-year contract. Existing Xoom customers can enter their contact info at this site can get information on how to send the Xoom to Motorola for the upgrade. Customers are expected to get the Xoom back back in roughly six business days.

The 4G capability comes more than seven months after the Xoom tablet originally hit the market, initially as a 3G-only device. The tablet, which was the first to use the tablet-specific Honeycomb version of Android, was supposed to be the first worthy competitor to Apple's iPad.

Instead, the Xoom received a mixed critical response and couldn't sell many devices until it cut its price,which was at a premium to the iPad. It's one of many tablets that have struggled to establish a foothold in a market dominated by Apple.

It's unclear whether the 4G upgrade will make much of a difference now. Particularly after Amazon unveiled a $199 tablet that disrupts what consumers think they need to pay for a tablet. Motorola is reportedly introducing a sequel as well.

Verizon Wireless customers won't have to switch their data plans with the upgrade. The plans range between $30 and 2 gigabytes of data a month to $80 for 10 gigabytes.

Corrected at 4:53 p.m. PT: to note that customers can not go to Verizon stores to get their 4G upgrade. … Read more

Kindle Fire sets a new (low) price point for tablets

commentary Well, the Kindle Fire just up and ruined it for all the other tablet makers.

Amazon just put the rest of the tablet world on notice by pricing the Kindle Fire at $199, less than half of the $500 mark that the industry has gravitated toward as a standard price. By doing so, Amazon is redefining for consumers just how much they need to pay for a quality tablet.

"It makes it much more difficult for pure tablet vendors--other than Apple--to sell products at a profit," said Avi Greengart, who covers consumer electronic products for Current Analysis. … Read more

The 404 911: Where we put our ear to the cloud (podcast)

Welcome to the bigger and beefier 404 Podcast! With Buzz Out Loud going weekly, we're taking the reins and reporting all the daily tech news headlines in addition all the discussion topics, voice mails, and jokes at Wilson's expense you've come to expect from our show.

We're also superexcited to have SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung in the studio for the second part of today's episode. SoundCloud.com is a music-streaming service that allows anyone to upload and share music across multiple platforms--blogs, direct links, and even cross-platform properties like Outloud.fm and Headliner.fm.

Alexander tells us all about how the company started with just a few musicians playing songs for one another, then slowly grew into a service with over 5 million active users uploading, playing, and sharing music. We'll also talk to him about SoundCloud's partnership with Facebook announced last week at the company's F8 Developers Conference, and what you can expect from the Web service in the coming months.

Stay tuned after the break for more discussion topics about this weekend's Facebook paid-services hoax, more Facebook privacy flaws, and more!

The 404 Digest for Episode 911