Jean-Louis Gassée digs into the mystery of the bell shaped iPad sales curve. From rollout in April of 2010 through the first quarter of 2014 the curve was rising. Since then, the curve has been steadily falling, though it is still too early to truly see the impact of Apple’s new, low-price iPad strategy.
A great read, with some thoughtful explanations (see the iPad’s “lean back” consumers and “elongated upgrade cycle”).
Gassée’s explanations make sense to me. The iPad was very quick to mature – it didn’t take many revisions to get to the point where it did everything most buyers want it to.
Apple has had a lot of difficulty coming up with reasons for customers to buy a newer iPad, or a more expensive one. The iPad Pro is cool, but I don’t think its a great choice for most buyers. Most “consumption” customers don’t need the pen, and most “productivity” users are better served by a regular notebook computer.
I would think the chip advances are already there for Apple to allow for two modes on the iPad. iPad mode or Mac mode, simply switch between the two. I use a large screen iMac desktop and a iPad Pro with keyboard and Pencil. I currently do not have a laptop. I would love for my iPad to function similar to a full on Mac laptop at times. Perhaps Apple would prefer me to just buy another Apple device to meet this need, but for me a laptop is actually overkill.
As several commenters on Gassee’s post noted, the iPads are too good. The first one was swiftly obsoleted but the iPad 2 was great. The 3 was the first retina model and too heavy and the first Mini was not retina but when the Mini 2 came out you had a ‘lean back’ small tablet that worked for long form reading and a lot of other things. The introduction of the iPad Air made the full size iPad light enough that it worked well for people who wanted that size.
I still have and use daily my Mini 2 and that’s a problem for Apple selling more – I don’t have a compelling reason to upgrade. Nothing I do on it challenges the CPU. I don’t sketch so I don’t need Pencil. It’s retina, so the screen is fine. Why buy another?
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