Android gains in tablets, Apple slows in third quarter, IDC says
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
In 2Q 2012, Apple sold 17M out of 25M total (68%).
In 3Q 2012, Apple sold 14M out of 27.8M total (50%).
To not lose market share and maintain that 68%, Apple would have had to sell 30MM out of 43.8MM, more than double what they did sell. If they had just repeated the 2Q numbers, they would have had 55% share.
So the idea that the market share decrease was due to Apple buyers sitting out in anticipation of the mini seems rather misguided. Non-Apple went from 8MM to 13.8MM in one quarter.
(Here's the 2Q2012 numbers: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23632512)
I'd expect that the iPad Mini will have some positive impact for Apple (some of those looking at smaller and / or cheaper tablets will find it appealing) but there will also be a negative effect from the continuing improvements in the iPad's competitors, especially as the Android tablet ecosystem improves.
Essentially we seem to be heading to the place most sensible people predicted a couple of years back - a few big players sharing a market rather than a single one owning it.
I see a lot of people still thinking that Android is going to crush the iPad but I don't see why this would be.
20 years ago Windows crushed the Mac because that was the only easy way to interact with someone - to use the same OS and the same programmes. Today people will be reading this on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, Android and a whole bunch of other stuff. I don't get why anyone thinks, in an era where the desktop OS is more diverse than it's ever been, why tablets would standardise on a single OS.
It seems more natural that the natural state of affairs will be diversity and if that's the case so long as Apple keep making tablets people like, the iPad will continue to thrive.
For those who say Apple can't compete on low margin, high volume, I'd suggest that they have just so far chosen not to as they've been able to go high margin, high volume.
Right now Apple have the highest margins on hardware (perhaps the only margins on hardware) but also have the biggest music sales network, one of the biggest digital video sales / rental networks and a digital book sales network. It may be that to stay competitive in the game they have to sacrifice some of the up front revenue but remember they are still very able to compete on the media sales stuff that comprises pretty much all of Amazon's business model and a fair portion of Google's.
The only thing that seems certain to me is that we as consumers are going to do well out of the competition, the rest is up for grabs and I suspect will be for many years to come.
On the other hand, Apple just announced selling 3 million iPad minis this weekend so it looks as though there was some pent-up demand: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/apple-says-first-weeken...
Probably won't know until they publish their Q4 figures in a few months time.
First, when the iPod appeared, the whole ecosystem wasn't really about the "OS" of the device, and now iOS has a real competitor in Android, that a lot of other manufacturers can use, while back then there was no such unification from the other manufacturers. This matters because the iPod was a single-task product, while tablets are not.
Second, they said that Apple has its own stores, while the others do not. But we're living in a global market now, and Apple's stores are virtually non-existent outside of US. Having 1 or 5 stores in a whole country doesn't make much of a difference. So even if Android tablets completely fail in US, there's a huge market out there for them, outside of US, which is bound to become bigger than the whole "iPad market".
Such is not the case with apps. If you've spent a few hundred dollars on apps over the course of a few years using iOS devices, the cost to switch (assuming you care about continuing to use any of those apps once you're on Android) is pretty high.
I think this means that because many Apple buyers sat on the sidelines the overall pie was smaller. So this had a magnifying effect on Android's overall share of the market. Otherwise it's kind of an illogical statement.
> Admit it - The iPhone 5 IS a disappointment
So was the iPhone, and the iPad, and the iPhone 4, and the 4S, and the iPad mini, and basically every Apple product ever. This isn't new.
> It was projected to be some kind of a super-phone.
By who? Your local news station? Nobody with any sense made that prediction.
> Some even speculated it to have a mini projector, laser-keyboard and what not.
Random analysts and tech enthusiasts figured that Apple would randomly switch gears to gimmicky half baked features that nobody else has shipped yet instead of using the years of actual information at their disposal that shows Apple iterates over constantly overhauling?
Yeah real surprising.
> while the rest of its competitors have had super-fast quad-core chips with higher clock speed
You know nothing about the topic you're talking about. The iPhone 5 A6 processor benches faster than most Android tablets and the GPU outstrips all Mali GPUs and the Tegra 3. Meanwhile "super-fast quad core chip" has so little meaning it might as well just be a marketing term.
EDIT - Oh I see, you're also the guy who thinks open source wins everything because Android is doing well right now. I honestly hadn't noticed. I just see a dumb comment and pounce, I hadn't looked at the username for either comment until just now.
However if I'm bothering you frequently, that's not a good sign. It means you're spouting a bunch of ridiculous BS with little to no evidence or point. Try to avoid that in the future, and trust me you'll never see my name again.
Continue to and you almost certainly will. I don't check usernames, I just reply.
EDIT - I just have to add that I love that two comment replies to you four days apart counts as sexualized stalking. Either you're the biggest prude in history, extremely paranoid, or possibly just not as quick witted as you thought.