Did Apple get iPad’s price right or wrong?

What does Apple’s iPad mean for AAPL investors?

Eric Rosenbaum reports for TheStreet.com, “Many Apple watchers had anticipated that the new tablet device would debut with a price tag of $999. Apple surprised the market with Steve Jobs stealing a page from Ron Popeil’s infomercial playbook and offering the iPad at the low-low price of $499.”

“Maybe some of the negative reaction to the iPad has to do with the price: there is a fine line between over-pricing and pricing at a point where U.S. consumers assume the device can’t be all that great if it’s too easily within reach of their wallets,” Rosenbaum wonders. “Maybe the fact that 10% of the U.S. population is still unemployed has just made it an inopportune time to introduce a new toy — though the success of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader would suggest that finding an audience for the right product will not be a problem.”

MacDailyNews Take: What success? Amazon has offered no proof of success beyond saying vaguely “Kindle is a success.” (Please see related articles below.)

Rosenbaum continues, “Thus, we ask the tech-savvy reader of the TheStreet, will investors be had if they bet on the success of the iPad?”

Full article, with an opportunity to vote in their online poll at the article’s end, here.

MacDailyNews Take: The answer to our headline is: Right. Apple’s pricing is mighty enticing from the base model on up to the top-of-the-line and the rates they’ve secured from AT&T are excellent as well.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]

35 Comments

  1. “Maybe some of the negative reaction to the iPad has to do with the price: there is a fine line between over-pricing and pricing at a point where U.S. consumers assume the device can’t be all that great if it’s too easily within reach of their wallets,”

    Rosenbaum has to get IDIOT of the year for this kind of warped logic

  2. Apple’s Mac will fail because they’re priced too far out of reach of most peoples’ wallets.

    Apple’s iPad will fail because they’re priced too close within reach of most peoples’ wallets.

    Come on, which is it?

  3. ‘ there is a fine line between over-pricing and pricing at a point where U.S. consumers assume the device can’t be all that great if it’s too easily within reach of their wallets’

    This line sure makes Americans look incredibly stupid. I would be pissed after reading it if I lived in the US.

  4. For Such a small E-reader Market Kindle has a strangle hold on this area guys. For it not to be considered a success is retarded. AMAZON is NOT an ELECTRONICS CORPORATION:) For them to go out and make electronics and sell “millions” of kindles is pretty damn good. The other things you guys don’t take into account is when you go through the airport, everyone who reads has a kindle and they are talking positively about it. You can throw all your articles at me as you want about the kindle not being a success but people are spreading the word about it being a good product then those articles won’t persuade anyone, especially when the IPAD isn’t out. KINDLE IS A GOOD PRODUCT and if anything that amazon store will help sell i pads so why do you guys continue to try to kill AMAZON like they are GOOGLE?

  5. Andy B:

    Nobody’s trying to kill Amazon, just better their little Kindle, which shouldn’t be hard for a company that specializes in the ultimate hardware and software products.

    Amazon, hasn’t really been leveling with anyone and actually being very deceptive when it comes to either numbers of Kindle sold or fair pricing of their books ( they actually subsidized their Kindle by giving away books at cost, thereby denying authors and publishers their profits).

    Anyway, the iPad will speak for itself.

  6. I’d like to know if future software updates are included in the prices announced, like in case of iPhone, or not, like in case of iPod Touch. It’s not critical, but I’d like to know, and haven’t heard anything.
    anybody? thanks!

  7. This whole anti-iPad thing has been a tremendous boost for my own flagging ego.
    These incredibly well-paid experts and corporate bosses have revealed themselves to be so totally childish, illogical, and lacking in imagination, I am beginning to feel like a relative genius.
    World domination will be MINE!

  8. I think the problem with the IPAD is that it is closer to the Itouch than it is to the macbook. What it will really end up being is a big hard drive companion to the Iphone. You will text/do video/take pics/even word process on the phone and then you will use the ipad to transfer the information to it and do the more labor intensive jobs. The Iphone can do everything the IPAD can do albeit less powerfully.

    And if you cant do it on the Iphone…i am sure there is a rumor on this site that alleges the iphone will be able to do it in the next update.

    So will people pay for that or will they wait for the next more powerful iphone update…especially when this site says people read books on the iphone(which is overrated).

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