The Cost of Being an Early iPad Adopter

Megan McArdle reports that:

Remember the kerfuffle over the original iPhone? Apple charged luxe prices for the first few months, and then after it had wrung every possible dollar out of the early adopters, dropped the cost to capture more price-sensitive users. Many of those who had bought early reacted with the righteous fury of a wronged spouse.

This time around, they can't say they weren't warned: Apple has apparently already said that if sales of the iPad aren't brisk enough, it will drop the price. I expect it will have to, if the company is to have any hope of hitting the 1-5 million sales analysts are projecting in the first year. $500 is pretty steep for a netbook without a keyboard.

The question before us thus is simple: How much of a premium are you willing to pay to be an early adopter? Personally, I could live with 20%.

Comments

[Cornellian]

I'm waiting for the first round of reviews just in case they reveal some significant problem. After that I'm not that concerned about a price drop. Even a 20% drop isn't all that much in dollar terms.

[Chris MacDonald]

I wouldn't pay anything to "be" an early adopter, per se. (i.e., I don't care (much) about being a member of that group). Or rather, I suppose I'd pay a bit -- I'm enough of a geek for that. But not much.

But I'll happily pay a premium to get what I want earlier rather than later. 20% sounds about right, though it might better be expressed as a dollar figure than as a %. I'm happy to pay 20% extra on a $500 item, basically because $100 isn't a huge deal to me. But I doubt I'd be willing to pay 20% extra for a $5000 item.

There must be a literature on roughly this question!

[Greg]

20% sounds about right to me. but I would add that the early adopters also get somewhat slower models. my early ipod touch is very slow with web sites compared to newer models.

[tomhynes]

Moore's Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Generally, the cost of electronics drops in half every two years. That works out to about a 15% reduction every six months.

Companies must either bump up performance by 15% every six months or reduce prices by 15%.

Moore's law does not apply to law schools.

[Tony]

Not only will the price drop, but the next iteration and copycats will be much much better. Copyright infringement at its finest: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2010/02/04/dont-copy-a-website-especially-if-it-belongs-to-a-law-firm/