MG Siegler:
iPad sales did disappoint one group of folks immensely: Wall Street.
As a standalone business, just based on the last 12 months of revenue, the iPad would be in the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500. Think about that for a second. The iPad alone is bigger than almost all Fortune 500 companies.
If the iPad is a fad, it’s the greatest fad in the history of American business.
It’s easy to point to “fewer iPads sold” and Chicken Little the story to death – as respected columnist Gassee and Mossberg have done. But it would still be wrong.
The nice thing is MG Siegler works for Google Ventures and still pointed out that the iPad is doing extremely well. MG has integrity.
I never did find a use for my iPad. I love my iPhone, and iOS is perfect for something like that, but with the iPad I’m always personally confronted with its limitations versus the Mac or any PC in general, and that’s software limitations, not hardware. However, when I gave my iPad away they see it as the greatest thing ever, and it has replaced their PC. I imagine those who are writing about the doom of the iPad while ignoring just how huge of a business it is are like me and bought one because it was new and shiny and found they didn’t much care for it.
The issue is growth rate. If ipad is only single digit growth rate.
That is equivalent of the Mac. Sure PC has negative growth rate.
But then ipad in no way can be be bigger than the pc market
all by itself.
sales of ipad in million by year
2010 – 14.79
2011 – 40.50
2012 – 65.73
2013 – 74.21
so for 2014 you need to sell 81 million just to get 10% growth.
and Apple is already 3 million on the hole.
That is what the problem is.
A cooling off is bound to happen; it’s inevitable in every product category as it matures. And with iPads falling into the PC category of personal upgrade cycles for a lot of people –being replaced 3-5 years apart instead of every two– I think it’ll take a few years to see if the iPad ends up a fad.
It’s kind of funny; I loved my iPad when I didn’t own a MacBook. Now that I own one, using a computer is enjoyable again and I don’t use the iPad nearly as much. But Touch ID is suddenly now the biggest reason why I would never give up my iPhone, so who knows? Maybe an iPad will find its way back into my workflow with a Touch ID scanner embedded into the home button. I really dig it when security and ease-of-use meld together, and I never liked locking my iPad and giving it a full password like a real computer.
in overseas markets, people have less disposable income and iOS devices and many high end Android devices are not cheap. A “big” phone with a 5″ screen can be both a tablet and a phone for many people and save them money.
As for the iPad number declining when compared to the same quarter the year before, I think in part the year before’s numbers were unusually high because the iPad mini, which went on sale in 1st quarter of that year, was supply constrained and many of the sales then were made in 2nd Quarter. That is why 2nd Quarter last year was so high.
The iPad doesn’t have eyes. Major fail.