iPad 2 launch could be delayed by two months, analyst says A research analyst's note has sent shudders of horror through the Applesphere by suggesting the as-yet-unannounced iPad 2 could arrive two months later than expected. Vincent Chen, Yuanta Securities' head of downstream tech equities, said yesterday that a redesign just before the Chinese New Year was causing production …
The trouble with a two month delay is that this means the new product becomes available in May or June. June is when Apple has in the past released new iPhones, and they may not want two major product launches at the same time, if only because big launches are hard work for their retail staff and they may want to give them a rest in between. So a four month delay might actually be better than a two month delay.
Apple probably wants to release new iPad models closer to Christmas anyway, as it is a product that is going to be given as gifts a lot. As it is, Apple releases new iPods in September or October, but that category is in decline and it might make sense to use that release period for iPads instead. Some rumours have suggested that Apple would release an iPad 2 in the first half of this year and an iPad 3 in the second half of this year to achieve this, but if there is a product delay on the iPad 2, this becomes less possible
Franky, at the moment, Apple is streets ahead on the product. We are only just seeing the first competing tablets, and they are expensive and dramatically inferior to the Apple product for now. The existing iPad may be a year old, but likely buyers are not going to abandon it right now for competitors products. The iPhone is in more danger, because after playing catchup for several years the competition there has reached the point where it is pretty good. Competing tablets will catch up, but it is going to take a couple more years.
"How the hell do you know that, seeing as they're not out yet?"
He could be making an informed judgement based on the reviews and previews of similar products seen on various technical web sites, like el Reg perhaps?
And I tend to agree with him, in spite of disliking Apple's closed policy. The completion for the iPad have been running to catch up and still have not delivered a worthwhile competitor, and by that I mean one that offers similar screen size and battery life, along with the feature the iPad has, and those it *should* have had, like Flash, proper USB ports, etc.
Windows based ones so far? Crap battery life and the necessary evil of AV software clogging it up.
Android ones so far? Half-baked (e.g. older versions of Android, etc) and the better ones being not much cheaper than the iPad in spite of lacking its polish. Also lack of proper Flash for the ARM chip, did I read that recently?
I have no intention of buying an iPad or iPad2 but if asked for advice, just now I would have to say if you really need to spunk that sort of money on a oversized phone without the phone bit, at least the Apple one is slick and works well!
Sure the Android tablets are just becoming available.
But, Apple's subscription policy is illegal. Plus such monopoly like moves only work when you actually have monopoly power.
Just look at media subscriptions:
A $100 service has to be marked up to $142.80 in order pay off Apple the 30% cut they demand.
A $100 servfice only needs to reach $111.11 or so on an Abdroid tablet. (10%)
Do you really think consumers are going to pay $31.80 just to be able to subscribe from an iPad? Even an iPad 2 or 3?
Fools and idiots will do that.
But, smart consumers will buy an Android instead and save on all of their subscriptions.
No surprise that Apple wants to force all media subscriptions to sell for the same high retail price mandated by Apple. But, that is illegal. And as time passes Apple's power to force consumers to pay the high price evaporates.
Of course Apple hopes to hell consumers remain dumb and stupid and do not realise the harm Apple is trying to levy upon the media industry and its own customers.
Fools buy Apple iDevices. That is very clear at this point in time.
Do not buy Apple iDevices. And advise your friends to avoid them as well. Unless you want your friends to pay the higher subscription prices.
Apple can charge a 30% fee if they want for Apple customers. But, when they try to force Android (and other tablets) to charge the same high price, it is illegal.
Do you really think that Walmart can force its competitors to charge at least the same high price as at Walmart. They wish no doubt. But, all consumers benefit when Walmart can not do so.
If you think otherwise, you must be okay with some third party determining the salary you get. Not you. Not your employer. Someone else. Do you accept that? If you do not, you can not be in favor of Apple's subscription policy. Apple wants to control the retail price of products sold or distributed through other channels. And such acts are illegal. And even dumb consumers and iDevice owners will realize the mistake they have made buying Apple.
So, Apple does not have time on its side at all. Right now consumers are ignorant of what Apple is trying to do to them. But, in time, they will learn. They do not want to be saddled with high subscription rates just because they use their iDevice to sign up. They will ALL want the lower prices available to everyone else.
I would agree that nothing on the market today is any better than the iPad. Arguably the Galaxy Tab is about as good for about the same price but hasn't captured the imagination (or the sales). However, the tablet scene will change in the following few months as devices with significantly more power at significantly more cost (LG Optimus Tab), jostle with those that have interesting USP's (the eee pad range, Windows 7 slates and so on) or a vast range of cheap and cheerful Android-based tablets.
The only way I can see this heading is a time-condensed version of the smartphone battle (iPhone vs Android) with Apple hype, style and innovation (read 'clever re-packaging') allowing them to charge a small premium to fashionistas, iOS/OSX ecosystem inhabitants and people who just trust Apple to 'get it right' and don't mind paying the extra moolah for the privilege.
Neither as it happens. Steve and his previous stance is now irrelevant, in any case when the iOS player is released later this year, he'll presumably claim his intervention has improved Adobe's development practice. I take it you didn't notice the html5 working group pretty much nailed the coffin lid shut for at least another year last week.
I'm not saying the new CPU can't handle it, in fact other devices using the Samsung A8 of the exisiting iPad already run it dandily, merely speculating that Samsung has not got the new CPU through certification yet.
I, though a former employee licensed and ported Macromedia Flash to a StrongARM 266Mhz device 10 years ago. The port took me almost 4 hours (as the Macromedia porting layer was THIN and well documented). Audio took a little longer as I hadn't written much multi-threaded code at that time.
I have had a chance in recent times to look at the latest Flash player code as well.
To sum things up, Flash doesn't have to be a CPU hog, it simply is in the cases where you have a configuration that has more or less unlimited resources to work with. After all, why would you intentionally throttle the speed and performance of an app down on a desktop machine with the ability to process a gazillion instructions per second?
HTML5 is just as much of a hog in most implementations. In fact, it's often worse. Unlike Flash which has a more or less monolithic design where the document model is designed specifically to contain the Flash components and therefore there's a 1:1 mapping between the scripting language and the objects themselves, a browser has far more obscurity throughout the layers and therefore there's a tremendous number of extra calls to achieve the same effects that you would in Flash. Additionally, ActionScript is meant to be compiled to run as native code on the local machine, EcmaScript in the browser accomplishes the act of communicating with the document model through thunking hacks.
When you start seeing more HTML5 written to perform similarly to Flash apps, you'll find that there's little difference in performance between the two. Even with Apple, Opera and Google working miracles to make their ecmascript implementations faster, ActionScript will often simply perform better since programmers will pass through less layers of crap to accomplish the same things since EcmaScript STILL doesn't support object oriented programming instead of prototyped programming. ON TOP OF THAT... the proposals for object oriented EcmaScript have been such nasty hacks that it's probably better to just use something like Google's GWT to program for EcmaScript since at least then you get to program a real object oriented language as opposed to a cludged later on top of another cludge like EcmaScript.
There is only a single reason why Flash and Silverlight doesn't exist for iPhone. Apps. Why would you pay for Bejeweled Blitz for iPhone if you could just play it for free on Facebook? And that's going away now that making it for HTML5 + EcmaScript is possible.
"Announcement of Apple announcement delayed by two months, says Analyst"
So this is like, an announcement that a future announcement of a possible unannounced-product announcement has been delayed.
Also there's an announcement that the iPad 3 will follow the iPad 2, and after that, there'll be an announcement of the unannounced-iPad 4, which will be followed by the release of the iPad 4, which by then will have been announced.
>This in turn would knock likely shipments this year down from 30.6 million to 23 million.
Not, you notice, from 30.4 million or from 30.65 million.
Plonkers.
"Something that no-one has promised might be a bit later than the bloke who didn't promise it made up last week and that means people won't be able to buy something that doesn't exist until a bit later, always supposing it exists then." And, I suppose, without any reference to whether it will be worth buying.
No wonder the bloody weather is changing with all this hot air going on.
For the 2nd time this month we see a speculative article about the same non-existant Apple product, this can only mean El Reg have been hypnotised by The Great Big Apple Machine and feel they have to pander to Apple and their Gollum* followers in order to get people to come to the site.
C'mon Reg, snap out of it, you're better than this.
* referring to their collective "my precioussssss" type response to anything new and shiny from Apple
I guess that's the trouble with reporting on rumour stories, they are, afterall, just rumours.
Seems the "delays" aren't going to happen and everything is on course.
Does anyone else get the feeling that perhaps these analysts were just trying to move the stock market prices for themselves?
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/22/rumors-of-iphone-5-ipad-2-delays-called-untrue/
Apples PR is still working spreading unsubstantiated rumours that take on a life of their own so people put off buying the competition whilst Apple fixes the bugs - assuming they now have an in-house testing regime.
If you wait for the latest and greatest in technology you will end up never buying.
Of course, an alternative would be t buy a previously owned iThingy as hordes of the faithful will discard their early model products and the patient can reap savings.
Until the Version 2 appears it is just vapourware.
The other thing involved with the delay is the potential for Jobs not to be able to repeat the words of the Insane Clown Posse - magical, miracle, etc.
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