The release (and instant success) of the iPad has caused more than one pundit to prognosticate the end of the Mac (and PC) as we know it. And while we’re quite sure the Mac is here to stay, Daniel “Deagol” Tello’s projections show that Apple may indeed be garnering more revenue from the iPad than the Mac by as soon as 2012. Obviously, it’s just one man’s opinion, but it makes for interesting reading regardless.
Tello, which estimates Apple’s business based on his own financial formula, posted to his blog on Monday a chart updated from one he originally produced in April, showing his hypothesis of how he thinks Apple’s iPad business will grow.
“I was way off in underestimating [iPad’s] contribution (as well as iPhone’s),” he wrote.
The revised chart now predicts that in 2011, Apple will garner about $20.1 billion in Mac revenue, about $32.7 billion in iPhone revenue, and about $18 billion in iPad revenue, with the remainder coming from sales of iPods, iTunes, software and peripherals.
While Tello’s projections of Mac revenues continues to grow slowly in the coming years, his chart shows iPad sales exceeding Mac sales in 2012, with further growth beyond.
“iPad would grab the #2 spot as a revenue driver within Apple, behind the iPhone. If we annualize the current quarter’s estimate it already exceeds annual iPod revenue, which was the #3 driver up to now (this even after taking into account the December seasonality which benefits the iPod),” Tello explained.
Click the link to see the chart for yourself.
Of course, Tello’s projections assume no major new product lines from Apple before then, just as his older projections couldn’t have foreseen the release of the iPad – a product he now expects to add billions to Apple’s annual revenue.
At first sight I thought this is just another person guessing badly, but I think he has a point.
Especially because he is not dismissing the Mac and predicts further — albeit smaller — growth for it.
This is the crucial fact that most other analysts just don’t understand:
The iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch needs a host computer; they’re not self-sufficient like some Android devices.
Apple will continue to derive huge revenue from its Mac business in years to come, simply because it’ll get people used to the client-host way of computing.
In my opinion this is the way it’ll be: A family will have a (personal) client device for each family member and one incredibly strong host device that’ll take care of the synchronisation and media handling, for times when the cloud (KLAUT!) doesn’t deliver (e.g. self-created media).
[I’m trying to get my family to do something like this over the course of the next year, because they need new machines.]
Wow. Someone else who has the same thoughts as me for future family computing. One of the the things that always had me a odds with Windows is that you need an abundance of hardware yet with a UNIX based system you can work with a dumb terminal.