For consumers, waiting often means winning

The choices are accumulating. Apple’s launch of new versions of the iPad may have signalled that the time many had been hoping for may finally be coming – a computer tablet market that belongs to the buyers. With every new product, the prices of the old ones have dipped. But it’s not just that. With the “incubation” periods – the time between the introduction of one product and its newest version – getting shorter and shorter, you can buy a cheaper though “old” version without having to care much about what it can do.
In the old days – or two or three years ago to be more exact – it was a big deal buying an iPad or waiting for a new model. A decision to wait could yield a drastically improved screen resolution or a built-in camera that wasn’t even there before. Today, we just take our pick. The “qualities” are not as important as whether what we buy suits our needs. Why pay big bucks for the latest generation while the prices of what were “new” only a few months ago have gone down so tantalisingly?
Competitors are being influenced by one another. Many months ago, Amazon broke away from its “e-reader only” tradition to join the tablet war. This along with other factors forced Apple to play with the sizes of its iPad. Samsung, which has been locked in a legal war with Apple, has challenged the latter’s strong presence in the smart phone and tablet markets with similar products of more variety when it comes to size. The line has also been blurred between a smart phone and computer tablet, thanks to Samsung. That can only be good for customers, as sooner or later Apple will arrive at the crossroads of having to decide whether to keep iPad and iPhone totally apart when it comes to key functions.
News analyses of the IT market are saying that Apple was taking aim at its competitors, namely Amazon, Google and Samsung, with the launch of the iPad Mini. The truth is Apple was simply responding to serious challenges. And in the bloody battlefield of computer tablets and smart phones, everyone is making advances and playing defensive all at the same time. Best news for the consumers is that this is obviously just the beginning.
The same phenomenon has hit the TV manufacturing industry before. Less than a decade ago, we needed to have almost a million baht to spare if we wanted a 60-inch LCD flat-screen that was anything but flat by today’s standard. Fast-developing technology did not necessarily mean cheaper prices. Without real competition, manufacturers buoyed by lower costs may keep the prices of their products high until serious challengers come along. Many years ago, a Sony flat-screen was beyond many households’ reach. Today, keeping the prices high could be a matter of life and death, unless the manufacturers are damned sure that their products are unrivalled.
The legal war, meanwhile, will likely get more and more intriguing. If Apple can make a big fuss about “shape”, can Samsung cry foul about “size”? To take it to the limit, everybody can sue everybody.
And we haven’t even talked about China yet. While Apple and Samsung were busy taking each other to court, low-income people around the globe were busy buying iPad or Galaxy Tab alternatives made by the Chinese flying under the copyright radar. The screen may not respond as excellently to touches as the American or Korean products, but if we have learnt anything from the Chinese, it’s that they are as fast as anybody else in making adjustments, if not faster.
It was a big decision by Apple to introduce the iPad Mini virtually hot on the heels of the New iPad. A lot was said during the introductory press conference but it appeared that the unspoken message was the loudest. In effect, Apple was officially telling everyone what the market started to realise some time back, that “It’s okay to wait a little longer”.