UK iPad prices announced

[hollis_f]

O2
500MB/day - £2.00
1GB/mo - £10.00
3GB/mo - £15.00

Orange
200MB/day - £2.00
1GB/week - £7.50
3GB/mo - £15.00
10GB/mo - £25.00

Vodaphone
250MB/mo - £10.00
5GB/mo - £25.00

WTF are the people at VF smoking?

 

[Kaouthia]

The same crap they usually smoke most likely.

Btw, T-Mobile are merging with Orange, so chances are we'll see them offering packages too at some point.

 

[SlimShaney]

Yep - Voda prices are crazy...

 

[redhed17]

People will buy them as a treat, albeit a very expensive one, but what it can do means I would use it constantly and get my moneys worth out of it.

People buy luxuries when times are good, and this is not that time.

They will initially buck the trend, but it will be interesting to see sales 3-4 months after release.

 

[Amp34]

It will be a luxury, but for the business side, the price is acceptable as far as I am concerned, and for the home user it is a luxury. So are home cinema systems, high end hifi, netbooks as well as a laptop and desktop, but yet we still buy them. Why? to treat ourselves.

For me it will be a very luxurious purchase. One I will get hours of pleasure from. I bought my PS3 for the same thing, I have a computer to play games on, and a DVD player, but Blu Ray, amazing graphics ability to play hi def movies, which made us buy our movies again to experience them in Hi Def.

People will buy them as a treat, albeit a very expensive one, but what it can do means I would use it constantly and get my moneys worth out of it. If I use one daily for a year I will have paid just over a pound a day for the privilege, just the same as I do for my Sky HD.

That IMHO is the reasons it will sell big over here.

Yup, exactly, it's an expensive luxury and compared to almost all the devices you listed, over twice the price. Unfortunately people buy cheap, most will probably spend no more than a couple of hundred on any of those devices (lets face it, how many people have expensive hifi systems, or seperate AV amps, especially when people generally pay a maximum of £600 for their 40" TV).

As for the laptop and desktop they are now "essential" (even the government are giving laptops to the "poor"), most people, whether they buy a desktop or laptop will only be spending £400-500 and use it til it dies, are they really going to spend the same on an iPad?

Apple don't really need to worry, they have the marketing and image (and the profit margins) to be able to sell only a few (in the grand scheme of it) of their products at that price and make a bomb, a lot of other companies don't. So until we see £200 devices (ie crap normally) I doubt they will really take off into the mainstream market.

Is this from first hand experience, or are you going from what others have said?

First hand experience with the ebook readers yes, not with an iPad yet but I have handled similar devices in the past, but all but one of those are facts, the latter about backlight depends on your ability to stare at a backlit screen (which varies massively).

As redhed17 said, it will be interesting to see the first few months sales, or perhaps 6 months, especially the market that buy them and the sales figures after the first couple of months (after the early adoptors have bought them). We'll also be able to see what sort of price point people are willing to buy them at (as there will be a couple of dozen at least out by the beginning of winter).

I still thing to become mainstream (in the netbook sense) we need to give it a couple of years so they become cheaper and are given away.

Personally I've always loved the idea of slates, but then i'm a bit of a gadget freak, and i've always thought of them for different uses. The iPad specifically seems to straddle all of them, not necesarily well. For example there are a few 7" screens out/coming out, perfect for train journeys and carying round to watch films, 12"+ ones for sitting around doing stuff at home and either size for for controlling your home (lights, TV, audio etc (I've really wanted one for this for years but never been able to afford one)).

EDIT: sorry this is taking it off topic a little, I just think price is important in the promotion of this sort of device.