Surface 2013: good bye iPad?

[fmr]

You think that companies rise and fall overnight on the strength of speculation in trading? Add economics to math as an area where you need to brush up on your skills.

Not overnight, but it certainly affects trading capabilities of ALL companies. The current problem world is facing (and debating) is not economics - is finance. That's the BIG problem. Certainly beyond my skills, and probably yours too, but that's not what matters to this subject, which is a niche in the whole. It was you who brought the stock market as a way of measure the probability of success of a company, and I merely pointed the weakness of the argument.

[robogone]

The problems faced by Surface pro is that, at the price tag it's in, ther's a tough competiotion from Asus and others, with even better products, costing more or less the same, or just a little more. It may hurt MS, but certainly doesn't hurt Windows nor the users. And it certainly hurts the pad territory, because, IMO, if a user is giver the option to choose a real computer that doubles as a pad for the same price or just a small amount more, the choice is easy (but that's just IMO, of course).

Surface Pro is a good product for sure, but the problem that I see for most people is that they will buy a laptop and a tablet for different uses. While a 2-in-1 product seems appealing, that doesn't seem to be translating to sales.

It's not MS who is taking Apple's share of the market though, it's the manufacturers with Android based devices that are gaining, because of pricing. Market forces will eventually force Apple to reduce the price of its hardware and take smaller margins. If they don't then they won't maintain the same amount of profit with lowered volume no matter how good their margins are.

[robogone]

You think that companies rise and fall overnight on the strength of speculation in trading? Add economics to math as an area where you need to brush up on your skills.

Not overnight, but it certainly affects trading capabilities of ALL companies. The current problem world is facing (and debating) is not economics - is finance. That's the BIG problem. Certainly beyond my skills, and probably yours too, but that's not what matters to this subject, which is a niche in the whole. It was you who brought the stock market as a way of measure the probability of success of a company, and I merely pointed the weakness of the argument.

I don't know what you mean by "trading capabilities".

I also don't know what you mean by "The current problem world is facing (and debating) is not economics - is finance". You cannot untangle these concepts - they go hand in hand at the macro level and most do so at the micro level.

You didn't point out any weakness in my argument, or at least not in any comprehensible way. If the stock price of a company is not a good way of determining the economic outlook of the company, why do people invest in good performing stock? Market confidence is *everything* in the investment world.

[fmr]

You didn't point out any weakness in my argument, or at least not in any comprehensible way. If the stock price of a company is not a good way of determining the economic outlook of the company, why do people invest in good performing stock? Market confidence is *everything* in the investment world.

I really don't know how to explain it better. If you do not understand/agree, fine with me. Let's stay on topic.

[u_f_o]

about the new surface.. it all depends when/if music dev's jump onboard eh? cakewalk already did.. i don't know how successful that is.

also, perhaps the next generation ipad will also run full osx..?

On board of what? It runs Windows, therefore, all music dev's are already on board.

on board of making touch optimized gui's..

[Aural Chaos]

Let's stay on topic.

But the topic is stupid, we all know by now that the iPad isn't going away, and Surface Pro did not/will not change that fact....

[robogone]

You didn't point out any weakness in my argument, or at least not in any comprehensible way. If the stock price of a company is not a good way of determining the economic outlook of the company, why do people invest in good performing stock? Market confidence is *everything* in the investment world.

I really don't know how to explain it better.

Explaining it better won't help. By your own admission you don't have the background, so that is probably where the problem lies.

If you do not understand/agree, fine with me.

That is not the problem. The problem is that I'm questioning what you're saying as it makes no sense in the context of how markets work. That's a very different thing from not understanding.

Let's stay on topic.

I thought we were, but if you're getting uncomfortable outside of the realm of your knowledge I'll stop.

[egbert]

Just on the Android thing - I wonder what Google's ultimate objective is here.

MS and Apple - current owners of the desktop OS/software world- want to migrate their OSs, which began life on the desktop, into the portable space - in which Google is currently a dominant and rising force.

Apple made a clear split initially with their iOS designated as separate - a different horse for a different course. MS wants to call everything Windows and have made a bit of a hodge-podge of everything except their WinNT based stuff which was done properly. Their multiple phone OS revisions and the new RT OS are perhaps going to amount to something eventually but they haven't thus far. Apple, meanwhile, seem to be in the process of making some sort of gradual merger between their desktop and mobile OSs and as memory and processing power scale, the may become one and the same. They already share common elements. MS might do the same in time - as portables become more powerful they might be running something progressively closer to the touch enabled desktop version of NT.

This brings me back to Google. Their migration is - if anything - going in the other direction. They brought a version of Linux to portable devices. Lots of others - like Nokia and Sharp - had the same idea but Google - a services company - beat all the software and hardware companies to successfully disseminating a version of Linux into billions of devices.

Except for embedded versions in set top boxes and automobiles and appliances, no-one else succeeded at what would have seemed like the obvious play. If you talked to IT engineers in the mid 80s they predicted we would all be running Unix on the desktop by the mid 90s or so and it never happened. By the mid to late 90s Linux seemed like the next obvious winner and until Android is hasn't happened in the consumer space except in embedded forms.

Well, is it possible Google are planning the reverse of the trajectory that MS and Apple are on? They will have their platform on billions of portables and then, potentially, they could bring a version of Android to the desktop too. It is also possible that they don't care to. They may not even see the need - the money is going to be in the many more people who will access the internet using Android devices that start at next to nothing prices and ascend to the cost of a laptop.

Then, there are the problems that come with being a monopoly and the burdens of supporting drivers to a zillion things. MS never tried to sell Windows for MainFrames so Google may stick to something like the forms they already cater for. However, since they have Linux, which is extensible to any scale, and they have a web store for selling apps and a huge community of developers, they could be keen to cash in. Their current revenue streams may not last forever if competitors emerge in search etc so this could eventually be necessary.

[polaris20]

about the new surface.. it all depends when/if music dev's jump onboard eh? cakewalk already did.. i don't know how successful that is.

also, perhaps the next generation ipad will also run full osx..?

On board of what? It runs Windows, therefore, all music dev's are already on board.

on board of making touch optimized gui's..

Bingo. All music dev's aren't onboard. If they were, we'd have touch optimized audio apps running on Windows x86, which, with limited exception, we do not.

I have a Windows 8 tablet right here. It's a cool tablet, but at 10" with non-touch optimized audio apps, it's pretty much unusable for that purpose. Studio One, Reaper, Tracktion......they all are really awkward to use, because they were designed for a mouse. Until that changes, Windows 8 isn't a good audio solution, in terms of strictly tablet use. Obviously when you add a keyboard and mouse that changes, but you might as well just use a laptop at that point.

[egbert]

Some more on the pad market here.

[robogone]

Some more on the pad market here.

Interesting article.

It kind of implies that the tablet market is following the smartphone market in that it is becoming fragmented over time with a two tier market being created - the high end and the low end. The low end is surging while the high end is stagnating. If it follows the pattern of phones, then we should start seeing reductions in price of the high end manufacturers so that they can maintain profits when volume drops.

I guess we'll see over the next few quarters how it's going to play out.

[egbert]

Here is another story on Google's ascendancy - 80%+ market share - and Windows phone is past Blackberry.

[zerocrossing]

about the new surface.. it all depends when/if music dev's jump onboard eh? cakewalk already did.. i don't know how successful that is.

also, perhaps the next generation ipad will also run full osx..?

On board of what? It runs Windows, therefore, all music dev's are already on board.

on board of making touch optimized gui's..

Easier said than done. I practically had to twist the arm of a client who kept wanting buttons and menu items to be smaller and more tightly packed even though it was going to run on Windows 8 desktops and tablets and Android devices. He kept calling generously sized menus "ugly." I kept saying, "Try it on device..." but he'd wave his hands and say, "Well it has to look good on the desktop too."

[Aural Chaos]

Here is another story on Google's ascendancy - 80%+ market share - and Windows phone is past Blackberry.

Google can have 100% market share OF PHONES, it still isn't going to mean the iPad is going away...

[egbert]

Here is another story on Google's ascendancy - 80%+ market share - and Windows phone is past Blackberry.

Google can have 100% market share OF PHONES, it still isn't going to mean the iPad is going away...

Of course not - I am not the OP so the thread title doesn't reflect any prognostications I am making.

The distinction between phones and pads is become very blurred. They run on the same cellular networks and screen sizes are more of a continuum these days with the so called phablets up to 8 inches and having phone functions and the smaller pads down at 7 inches - even from Apple. Once, Apple wanted to sell you a 3.x inch iPhone and a 10 inch iPad. iPad could have had phone functions and a bluetooth headset or something but that didn't suit their marketing. Now the distinction is becoming artificial and many will make do with one device I suspect.