Surface 2013: good bye iPad?

[chk071]

The market may turn, and some companies will lead or adapt to the next change, while others will get left behind.

Biggest pointless assertion I ever read. Worthing to be included in the Song of La Palice

I know! I was just trying to summarize all the drivel that genius has been spouting in this thread. Check it out, it's hilarious.

Hey Pyloslax, @fmr is actually one of the doom-mongers and nothing short of hilarious himself:

It may not be right now, or next year, but the iPad will be gone in a few years, since people start to realize that, behind the fun, it really does not do nothing that can be compared to a real computer running a real OS.

Personally I have to believe it is an troll- or attention-thingy that drives them because I simply refuse to believe anybody unconsiously are willing to make such big fools of themselves. However, it may be denial from my part and the scaring truth could be that they actually believe their nonsense.

So far two years have passed since the beginning of this thread and the iPad is alive and kicking.

Or it could just be that something beyond rationality can't be explained in a rational way. There's much emotionality in the consumer habits these days. A relative just bought his second iPhone now for example, after having the other for half a year, just to get the new model. And now he's happy writing Whatsapp messages and SMS with it... he doesn't buy a cover for it either, because something this precious shall not be covered, so that it always can be watched, and adored. I think Apple to a large degress still lives from this kind of attitude. But then, where would the other companies be if it was all rationality? Look at the midi keyboards released these days. Blinky blinky and 100 features. Noone needs it, but it's cool to look at.

[IncarnateX]

Or it could just be that something beyond rationality can't be explained in a rational way. There's much emotionality in the consumer habits these days. A relative just bought his second iPhone now for example, after having the other for half a year, just to get the new model. And now he's happy writing Whatsapp messages and SMS with it... he doesn't buy a cover for it either, because something this precious shall not be covered, so that it always can be watched, and adored. I think Apple to a large degress still lives from this kind of attitude. But then, where would the other companies be if it was all rationality? Look at the midi keyboards released these days. Blinky blinky and 100 features. Noone needs it, but it's cool to look at.

Not sure why you are quoting me to say that. The thing beyond rationality I am talking about is not consumer behavior but KVR members displaying their infinite ignorance by predicting the death of the iPad on basis of lame assertions (e.g. @fmr: People buy iPads because they think they are PCs and when they find out they are not, which will take them a few years, the iPad will die )

[chk071]

Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, who knows? Netbooks used to be a big thing before tablet PC's. No noone talks anymore about them, and they almost completely vanished from the shops, while now, "Ultrabooks" are a similar thing. What surely will come is the merge of desktop OS's, and mobile OS's, and maybe that will put Google under pressure, due to their lack of a real desktop OS, while Windows and MacOS are already preparing their desktop experience to offer a good touch experience too. Who knows, maybe Android will be dead in a few years?

[IncarnateX]

Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, who knows? Netbooks used to be a big thing before tablet PC's. No noone talks anymore about them, and they almost completely vanished from the shops, while now, "Ultrabooks" are a similar thing. What surely will come is the merge of desktop OS's, and mobile OS's, and maybe that will put Google under pressure, due to their lack of a real desktop OS, while Windows and MacOS are already preparing their desktop experience to offer a good touch experience too. Who knows, maybe Android will be dead in a few years?

Yes and "maybe" Santa Claus is real and will give me an iPad air 3 next Christmas. If you want to be a real oracle or a at least a convincing market analyst like the fortune tellers around, "maybe" is a term to be avoided. It signifies precisely nothing and cannot be used to back up any argument/prediction.

[chk071]

Fair enough, but i guess that assumptions should be allowed? To be honest, i'm a bit surprised myself that Apple is still doing so well with their products. I would have thought that due to their competitiors products being nearly the same "premium" quality, Apple would be robbed off their "premium" status soon. But so far, there's no end to be seen yet.

[IncarnateX]

Well, "maybe" it is not as much the succes of Apple as it is the failure of the others. Have anyone ever considered the irony of presenting a product as an "iPad Killer". It is like saying "hey we are going to make a plagiat, which will be more popular than the product we are plagiating" instead of presenting it as something entirely new and different. This way they are actually putting the product they want to beat on a pedestal and further they provide a measure for their own total failure if they actually do not kill the iPad.

However, if you google the failure of android tablet in comparison to iPads you get tons of analysis claiming it is basically the lack of apps and related to this, the many different and incompatible version of Androids. May be true too, but in so far as these are presented as iPad killers or even just alternatives, they have prompted such a comparison themselves from the outset of their marketing. In others words "they have asked for it".

[chk071]

Not sure if i'd call such a statistic as a failure of Android tablet devices: http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/ ... ebssystem/ To sum it up, in the last 3 years (from the date the statistic was made), Android got from a 14% market share on tablet PC up to 62% market share, while Apple lost 50%!

[IncarnateX]

There is a common mistake when reading these figures. It is true that tablets with android had 62% of the market share compared to Apple's 36% but that is no suprise as more and more androids tablets hit the market. Look at figure two at this page and you will see that company-wise and not OS-wise Apple still sold most tablets.

http://m.ibtimes.com/apple-ios-vs-googl ... 13-1559094


e.g.

Apple 70400159 sales in 2013 about 36% of market share
Samsung 37411921 sales in 2013 about 19% of market share

So company wise the iPad still rules.

[chk071]

Ok, just tried to counter the "failure of Android tablets" argument in general. I don't think it's a matter of the apps in most cases also, there are very professional apps for Android too. Of course, horses for courses, i wouldn't in the world get an Android tablet for music making. Not only is iOS made with audio stuff in mind, but there's also a lot more audio apps, and a lot better connectivity with other devices on Apple tablets or smartphones. For anything else, i'd say Android is on par with iOS. And the apps, if payware, are in most cases less expensive.

[IncarnateX]

Your on track if failure is interpreted like you do, but remember in this thread the opposite of failure is actually killing the iPad. Apple has lost market shares but still holds over 1/3 of the market. Samsung holds 19% and Microsoft 2% and that gives both Samsung and especially Microsoft a long way to go if "killing" shall make sense even metaphorically.

[trimph1]

You really need better sales figures than that to get into killer mode.

[egbert]

http://www.wiley.com/legacy/products/su ... /ford.html

Above is an account of the history of the Model T, a car which dominated the US market and roads for a couple of decades. It had 60% of new car sales in 1921 and outsold its nearest competitor 6 to 1 in 1924. The show was all over by 1927. Chevrolet had launched a Model T killer. Initially, the Model T had superior design and technology but it was eventually surpassed by competitors' designs and Ford had to move on to new designs.

Tablet style computers have been depicted in SciFi for at least half a century and Gates pushed them as the future of the PC at the turn of the Millenium. Early tablet PC versions didn't get traction but the iPad put design and marketing together to deliver a commercial success.

All the other companies - obviously - want a piece of the action. (HP have put it about recently that HP had no response to the iPad because Hurd had slashed their R&D spending by 50%. HP was going to be all about over-priced ink apparently. The bean counter mentality at the top of US corporations where idiots are paid 8 figure salaries for killing innovation - unbelievable ...)
The biggest, like MS and Intel, are prepared to run divisions producing tablets or parts for them at a loss ($4bn for Intel in 2014, $3bn in 2013) to get a share. Apple dominance, were it to have continued, would have been an historical anomaly and, having dropped to ~1/3 market share it is actually already over by some measures.

Given that Apple doesn't make the mistakes Henry Ford did (in fetishising the characteristics of the successful model) but continues to develop the product, then there is no reason why it should disappear anytime in the foreseeable future. The fact that Cook was able to overturn the Jobs dogma about small screen sizes on the iPhone has meant that the larger iPhone 6 has been a much more successful model. Jobs was more of the Henry Ford "any colour you like, so long as it is black" stripe.

[jopy]

While your points are well taken Egbert, Ford is still an enormous company in the automobile industry after over 100 years in business. Their "mistakes" obviously weren't that catastrophic.

Any first mover in a field will have decreasing market share when other companies come in to their industry. It's inevitable, but doesn't mean that that first movers are collapsing. Having a lower proportion of a rapidly expanding market also doesn't mean your product line is dying. iPhones do over $10 billion per year in sales, and iPads do about $3 billion. That's still hardly a niche product market.

What's really amazing is a twenty-year lookback at Apple. In 1995 or so, there was an episode of the Simpsons where Homer was talking about Apple computers at a record store, and the joke was that the clerk was as clueless about Apple as he had been about Styx or the King Biscuit Flour Hour.

[UltraJv]

There are cheap - (round £90) Windows 8 Tablets now :

http://www.tesco.com/direct/connect-7-t ... 2-3108.prd

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/20 ... n_android/

[fmr]

There is a common mistake when reading these figures. It is true that tablets with android had 62% of the market share compared to Apple's 36% but that is no suprise as more and more androids tablets hit the market. Look at figure two at this page and you will see that company-wise and not OS-wise Apple still sold most tablets.

http://m.ibtimes.com/apple-ios-vs-googl ... 13-1559094


e.g.

Apple 70400159 sales in 2013 about 36% of market share
Samsung 37411921 sales in 2013 about 19% of market share

So company wise the iPad still rules.

Who's in denial now? You passed from a overall market statistics to a company by company statistics in just one year (and even that is not as favourable as before). And the overall statistics also said that tablet sales increased much less than it was expected in 2014, and are expected to just increase slightly next year, while the ultrabooks will increase sales even more.

Does this show you something, or do you still prefer dreaming with Apple Santa?