Apple willing to drop iPad price

As they did previously with the iPhone and AppleTV, Apple execs say they would be willing to drop iPad prices if the device doesn’t perform well in the few critical months after its widespread availability.

According to a story from The Wall Street Journal, a Credit Suisse Analyst met with Apple executives who said that they intended to stay “nimble” on iPad pricing.

Credit Suisse Analyst Bill Shope wrote in a note, “While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated).”

The iPad pricing was much lower than expected, but though the device isn’t yet available, many skeptics doubt that the iPad will revolutionise the computing world as the hype leading up to the device purported.

A new survey conducted by online retailer Retrevo and reported on a CNN blog revealed that the hype might have turned off consumers, with 26% of users in early January saying they had heard about the Apple tablet but were not interested in buying one. That number shot up to 52% after the Apple reveal.

But those same figures showed that the number of people willing to buy the tablet increased from 3% before the reveal to 9% after, with 21% saying after that they would be interested in buying an iPad but need more information.

And in a post on Gizmodo, the tech blog reminisced about the $US200 price cut that followed a few months after the iPhone release, which increased the device’s sales by 200%.