With the upcoming Apple announcement, all the smartest people in the industry seem to be either missing one thing or dancing around it. It is my estimation that should Apple announce some sort of tablet, they’ll most likely make it largely subsidized by advertisements.
Why’s this? A couple of things lead me down this path:
- Many of the analysts have (correctly in my opinion) determined that for the tablet to succeed it needs to be below $500
- Apple doesn’t make ‘cheap’ stuff.
- Apple’s recent patent filing for ‘enforceable’ operating system-level advertisements.
A standard way to reduce end-user costs has been to go ad-supported. Apple’s tablet would drive a pretty good premium on the ad circuit partially because it’s Apple-chic, and partially because of the ‘enforceable’ nature of these ads. It stands to reason that this would be something Apple may consider for their tablet.
