Retrevo sets a price for Apple's rumoured so-called tablet product

O RLY?. This report’s generating lots of coverage, we note – so we’d best chime in too….seems that Apple’s still unannounced, unconfirmed and currently undetailed purported tablet/slate thing needs to sell for $600 or less to appeal to the wide church of PC users, apparently. 

Retrevo tells us, “Apple’s going to have to be very aggressive on pricing if they want to win over PC owners.”   Uh huh?

Assuming Apple does intend taking on the netbook market with its tablet, the research warns: “The study also found Apple had better hurry up if they want to capture any of the netbook market because many consumers, both Mac and PC owners, have already bought a netbook and many more plan on buying one soon.”

“It’s also possible they’ll position it more as a mobile media player and computer and treat it more as a netbook to compete with all the other netbook vendors currently grabbing laptop market share. If they go the netbook route they will have some catching up to do. The Gadgetology study indicated that 37% of Mac owners already own or plan to buy a netbook this year. Even worse for Apple is the fact that Apple has already lost the early adopters like the 59% of the iPhone owners who responded to the survey saying they already own or plan to buy a netbook this year,” the report also informs.

We can understand the logic – as with the iPod and iPhone, Apple does eventually need to get its products into the hands of Windows users to grab mass market share. Price is important, but thinking back to the launch of previous products, we recognise Apple’s very good at bringing advanced products to first adopter audiences, who then do an equally good job showing everyone else how good (or, sometimes, bad) their new devices are.

However, in a recession-hit market, price is certainly going to be something Apple execs are considering. Perhap ad-supported applications and operating systems may help reduce costs?

The data for this report came from a study of online individuals conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was 753 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the US. The study sample emanates from the Retrevo price comparison site.