Forrester Report Casts Doubt on iPad Competitors

By SAM GROBART
NYT

Commenters, sharpen your keyboards.

Last week, Forrester, the market research firm, issued a report on the state and near future of the tablet marketplace. If you were a manufacturer whose name did not rhyme with “Snapple,” it was not very pretty: The report’s title is “iPad Challengers Have Flawed Product Strategies.”

The report’s main conclusion was that, in spite of a flurry of activity among iPad competitors, none had addressed issues of pricing, distribution and product differentiation adequately to make a case for itself to consumers. Let’s take a look at some of the report’s conclusions, along with some analysis of its major points:

The new tablets are too expensive. We would have to agree with that. As we’ve reported, Apple has — somewhat unexpectedly, given its place in the market as a premium PC product — kept iPad prices comparatively low, starting at $499. Motorola’s Xoom starts at $100 more than that. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab can be had for $250, but that does not include a two-year contract with a mobile carrier. Someone should be coming in to undercut this market, but that has proved harder than it looks.

(More here.)