Is Apple giving up on tablets, or is the new iPad a smart business move at $330? (poll results)

Tablet, laptop and desktop shipments forecast for 2020, from Statista

As you an see from the chart above, the tablet market is far from its heydays, and its growth is expected to stall for the sake of laptops, which are projected to grow in shipments. Apple just shifted its tablet strategy this week with the introduction of a new 9.7" iPad, whose price starts at just $329, compared to $499 before. Most of our survey respondents below think that this is a smart business move, given that the hardware components inside have fallen in price since the days of the Air 2, and Apple's app and services business is growing leaps and bounds, too. Just 13% consider a $330 iPad giving up on tablets, while a third of our respondents consider this this move as a little bit of both.

Will Apple still make money from the iPad at $329, though? Don't worry, when the iPad Air 2 launched two and a half years ago, IHS estimates pegged the cost of its components and assembly at $275. The nature of the electronics' industry is that cost of components falls drastically over time, and the only upgrades worth talking about in the new iPad, compared to the Air 2, are a faster, A9 chipset, a "brighter Retina Display," and a new Touch ID finger scanner. Furthermore, given that the new iPad won't have the laminated display tech and anti-reflective coating of its predecessor, we wouldn't be surprised if the total cost to make this thing now hovers around the $150 mark. Thus, the new slate still offers a decent margin in terms of pure hardware, but let's not forget that Apple also makes bank on apps and subscription services.

This "service" business at Apple is growing much faster in revenue than the rest of its portfolio. The App Store, Apple Music, iCloud, iTunes, Apple Pay transaction fees, and so on, hauled in no less than $6.325 billion in Q3, which is a 20% increase year-on-year, and the profit margin from those is pretty high. Thus, the more iOS devices Apple gets in the hands of users, the more money it will make on the accompanying apps and media consumption from its software ecosystem over time.