Above Avalon:
After a tumultuous multi-year stretch that included massive unit sales declines, declining average selling prices (ASPs), and deteriorating margin trends, the iPad business has turned a corner. The combination of improving upgrade fundamentals, less severe iPad mini sales declines, and a stronger iPad lineup with the iPad Pro and accompanying accessories have positioned the iPad category that much closer to stabilization. The worst is likely over.
Interesting analysis but my concern would be that those folks who are “on schedule” to upgrade their old iPads will do no such thing. That, in fact, they’ve learned their other devices can easily replace their old iPads so there’s no need to upgrade.
My iPad 2 is still holding on. Showing its age a bit, but still very useful.
Actually, I’m not sure there IS something that directly replaces an iPad. I have a mini 2 (the first retina Mini) and while it’s working fine now, if I had to replace it I’m not sure what I’d do. The 6S Plus works mostly for reading etc but is still much smaller than the Mini which is more comfortable to read on. Surface? Meh, not if I want to stay in the Apple ecosystem/don’t want to deal with Windows. Macbook? Different beasts. Kindle etc? For reading, sure but I also use the Mini for Facebook, twitter and various news apps.
just replaced my iPad mini 2 last week with an iPad Pro 12.9″
I would have to disagree. I don’t think anything Apple has can replace an iPad Pro, except an iPad Pro
Nothing personal, but I don’t get how folks are still using A5 devices in this day and age. I know iOS 9 was much friendlier to them, but…I mean, there are times I find A7 slow, and 1GB RAM frustrating. And A7 is four times faster than A5.
I’m terribly confused by this post. Isn’t the general narrative that iPads are replacing PCs? Are you suggesting that people are replacing iPads with phones? What?
Love my iPad Pro 9.7. With the Pencil, I’ve been constantly trying to replace as much of my work laptop as possible. The OS and Apps are in a bit of an uncanny valley. Really good, but I can’t move around and do things quite as quickly as on my laptop. Unlike most people, I don’t think this is an answered question. There’s a lot of room for Apple and app developers to learn and improve. I’d like to see easier app development software so prosumers and freelance developers can create very job specific custom tools for a reasonable return. HyperCard meets Automator meets FileMaker meets a WYSIWYG editor.
Our needs here are simple (we don’t run a lot of complex apps), and we have a tight budget for consumer tech (we’d like to be able to retire someday).
What other devices?
The general consensus is that people replaced their smaller tablets with larger phones. The iPhone x Plus ate into the Mini.
Yeah, that makes sense for the Mini, but overall… still a confusing post as I don’t think that applies to the larger iPads as much. The point being I don’t hear a lot of people saying that they don’t use their iPads anymore, it’s more that they’re using them more than ever but the upgrade cycles are longer as you can see but the fact that 15% out in the wild are still iPad 2’s (which I got 3.5 years out of before upgrading to an Air 2 because it was still good enough).
Even I am on iPad 2 for more than 3 years.
My requirements are limited to reading email and ebooks. No need for high speed.