Apple Projected to Lead Tablet Market Through 2013 as Rivals Stumble

[RichardI]

Considering Apple's absurd patent claims, it's amazing anyone had the guts to bother building a different tablet at all. Since, according to Apple's murder of patent crows, it is an infringement on the holy iPad if you make a device that is rectangular and has a screen.

 

[starnyc]

growth curve

If you get rid of the android bars and just show the iPad #'s, Apple's growth appears to plateau and stagnate in year 4. I don't buy this based on the iPod and iPhone growth curves.

Then, when you factor in the competition, which can't yet compete with the iPad, it's hard to extrapolate the exponential growth from current trends.

If a person buys a new tablet every 2 years, this chart seems to suggest that the extreme apple product loyalty will dry up, and iPad will just grow with size of the total market.

I hope Steve is OK... but iPad is more than OK - and this forecast does not make any sense.

 

[ftaok]

Most people are using these as web browsing, e-readers, and connectivity devices. Put a nice screen (and a graphics chip that can handle the strain) on any tablet regardless of OS and sell it for $200 and you will see parents starting to buy them for their kids instead of notebook computers.

that's the problem. if you put in a nice screen and a good gfx chip, you're gonna need to sell it for way more than $200 if you want to make a profit. Apple has set the bar as far as pricing goes and everyone else is benchmarked against it.

And if the tech advances to the point where the components drop in prices to allow for $200 tablets, Apple will have the same access to those components and can lower their prices accordingly.

IMHO, the way for another manufacturer to gain a decent share of the market is to offer something different than Apple. Don't try to clone the iPad with a few features that Apple doesn't offer. I'm referring to Flash and "open".

If a device manufacturer wants to play the razor/blade game, then they need to have an infrastructure that can generate revenue continuously. So, that rules out the Samsungs and HTCs of the world. That leaves us with Amazon, Facebook and Google. The trick will be getting the math to work out.

 

[firewood]

I do not think the tablet market will be that big come 2015

I have yet to see proof that there is any significant tablet market. Just Apple selling zillions of iPads.

HP accountants had some real numbers on actual tablet sales and returns. See what happened with that knowledge?

 

[MattInOz]

I think the analysts are wrong. I see manufacturers catching up to the graphics performance of the iPad (which is the only thing that sets it apart) and increased pricing pressures steering more adopters to lower cost options.

....

Look at the Kindle... they sold a ton of those things and it can't do 1/4 of the things the iPad can. Why? The display works very well for its intended purpose.

Or are they right for exactly the same reason. The same hardware is available for both these guys and everyone else. So the others will catch up in processing power but they aren't ever going to over take not unless one processor manufacture can some make a big break on the others for the same power usage.

Apple will have the more efficient graphics software, Kindle will have the best reading experience. They might be matched but they can't be beaten to a big enough degree. Unless the others are willing to draw a line in the sand and focus on a profitable market target. Let that drive their point of difference. Then iPad and Kindle will have the slicker devices.

Ok maybe in 5years their advantage will reduced to fractions of millimetres or minutes of battery life. Maybe the competitors can get the first number in their price one or two digits lower. Still Apple and Amazon both have the ability to move and adapt at will to suit. That is the advantage being widget makers will always have.

And the bigger silliness is even if market share drops both these guys will still have a growing units numbers and Profits. The other guys need to break new markets. It's not like we'll be at saturation for maybe a decade or more and it'll all look very different by then.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Another completely stupid prediction based on nothing.

These figures all depend on what is going to be released and how it is marketed and how it functions. NO ONE knows that. So these predictions are flakier than a box of breakfast cereal.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Wow! They project over 100 BILLION iPads by 2015? Gotta go get me a few thousand...

Wow! Considering that there are only 7 billion people on earth, that will average out to over 10 iPads for each human. I didn't realize they were selling that well.

 

[Tarzanman]

Or are they right for exactly the same reason. The same hardware is available for both these guys and everyone else. So the others will catch up in processing power but they aren't ever going to over take not unless one processor manufacture can some make a big break on the others for the same power usage.

Using your scenario where Apple anb both makers decide to use If the same hardware.... Apple will lose ground because iOS doesn't have any many features. This is exactly what happened with phones. Android handsets finally evolved to where the makers were using decent hardware and iOS found itself in 2nd place as a platform.

Apple will have the more efficient graphics software, Kindle will have the best reading experience. They might be matched but they can't be beaten to a big enough degree. Unless the others are willing to draw a line in the sand and focus on a profitable market target. Let that drive their point of difference. Then iPad and Kindle will have the slicker devices.

I haven't used the new Galaxy Tab 10.1, so I cannot accurately speak about whether iPad2's graphics are still the best, or just tied with Samsung. I wasn't putting the Kindle in contention with the iPad2, I was giving you an example of a low cost device that has it where it counts. Put a pretty display/monitor in front of the average user and they will be 95% satisfied.

Ok maybe in 5years their advantage will reduced to fractions of millimetres or minutes of battery life. Maybe the competitors can get the first number in their price one or two digits lower. Still Apple and Amazon both have the ability to move and adapt at will to suit. That is the advantage being widget makers will always have.

Unfortunately, I see the same thing happening with tablets as with phones. So much hardware will be available from so many manufacturers that Apple won't be able to maintain their #1 spot.

And the bigger silliness is even if market share drops both these guys will still have a growing units numbers and Profits. The other guys need to break new markets. It's not like we'll be at saturation for maybe a decade or more and it'll all look very different by then.

I disagree. Tablets aren't going to get any bigger than they are. Even the most powerful ones with the most features have accessories that turn them into (surprise) notebook computers. The growth will be eliminating specialization of tasks. A tablet which can pull alternative duty as:
-An e-reader
-A digitizer (for drawing and taking notes in class)
-A television
-A mobile phone
-A productivity platform (programming/image editing/etc)
-Personal digital storage (modular, so that people can expand if they need to)
Is what they should evolve into. Even so, there is a finite market for such devices.

One laptop makers catch on and start making ultra-thin laptops then tablets will go the way of the feature-phone.

 

[Tiggs]

I don't buy into the graph's conjecture that Apple's market and growth percentage will suddenly slow around 2013. Noone has done a truly viable competitor yet and more keep falling by the wayside like HP's.

 

[naterus]

um no....

Why is there an assumption that in 2011 the competing market share will more than double? That probably won't happen until 2013 (if that early). The other tablets are so far behind, plus with patent issues #samsung, among other setbacks (lack of innovation elsewhere, etc), that could be pushed back even further.

Always have to laugh a little when analyst's use shipments to gauge market share. Duh, apple is SELLING iPads like bottled water, while other tablets are for lack of better strategy, being given away for incentive. Shipments don't mean squat in this market. I don't usually speak out much, but this graph is dumb-dumb.

 

[SandynJosh]

I wonder what these charts looked like with the ipod first came out. Did they think that, after 6 years, Apple would have only 46% of the market, then, too?

No one at the time expected Apple to be as successful with the iPods as they were, but then analysts didn't take in account how effective the iTunes store would be in boosting the sales of the iPods. Various journals were also saying that this or that new music player would be the new iPod killer. When the Zune came out it was expected to knock Apple out of the cat-bird seat as well.

What no one seems to "get" is that it's not about the specs of the hardware. Regardless of whether it's an iPod, iPhone, or an iPad, it's the whole user experience which closely integrates the whole ecosystem the product sits within.

Now, with the automatic synching of the iDevices with each other through the iCloud, Apple has just raised the bar higher then the competitors expected. It took Apple several years to build and ready the iCloud infrastructure, it just adds to the mountain the competition needs to climb to compete.

I think it's funny that, much like with the iPhone, it's always the iPad vs every other tablet combined.

I agree. It's Apple vs 39 other Android licenses, and we haven't even seen the first Windows tablet yet. After the HP debacle with their WebOS tablet, people may be slow to jump on the competitive tablets, including the Windows tablets, because they might not stick around, but most certainly because the competition will lack the apps, the cloud, and whatever else Apple will throw in the mix to keep the competition scrambling to catch up.

Obviously all predictions are educated guesses. But it seems a little bold to predict out 4 years, in a tablet market that is hardly a year and a half old. I think the situation is more fluid than these figures suggest.

I agree. Apple will not let the pot just simmer, they will keep doing what they've done all along and keep raising the ecosystem bar and that will keep the competition off balance and struggling to have relevance in the tablet market.

For example, if the rumors are somewhat accurate, and Apple comes out with a retina display on the iPad3, then they've just moved the spec bar to where the competition can't go as Apple has bought up all the production of these hi-rez screens for a year or two into the future.

Didn't the Chairman of Acer just say the "tablet PC fever is receding." And notebooks will regain consumer interest.

He's just trying to keep his job a bit longer. The whole PC industry is sucking air and the netbooks are sucking the worst. Besides the margins are so thin that HP realized that it isn't even possible to "make it up with volume."

 

[Northgrove]

This projection depends on if Apple's competitors will even keep trying very hard (because that's what will be necessary) to compete with the iPad. It's not at all certain to me, since it's a dangerous game that has already killed HP's PC division. Companies willing to play this game also need to be able to carry losses of $500 million dollars or so, just in case.

The problem and rather unique situation here, although reminiscent of the iPod situation, is that it takes such a zealous effort and piles of cash to even compete due to Apple's enormous head start by now.

 

[SandynJosh]

Using your scenario where Apple anb both makers decide to use If the same hardware.... Apple will lose ground because iOS doesn't have any many features. This is exactly what happened with phones. Android handsets finally evolved to where the makers were using decent hardware and iOS found itself in 2nd place as a platform.

What actually happened is a bit more complicated then you describe it. Apple was committed to just one of the five carriers in the USA for a long time. Additionally, Apple iPhones were only available through limited numbers of carriers world-wide. One company can only do so much. Even though Apple has sold every iPhone (as well as every iPad) they can make, there is a limit as to what can be done. This has allowed the competitive Android phones to find a ready market.

Even though the iOS is the number two platform at present, Apple's iPhone3GS and iPhone4 are the top two selling phones. So, the consumers do not see the iPhone as equal to the Android phones as you seem to think. For many consumers the iPhone was not available on their carrier of choice. With the new iPhone5 and the opening up of the iPhone to all five USA carriers, consumers will be able to vote with their purchases on a level playing field. The result may surprise many "analysts."

Finally, it's really not about the specs of the hardware, as you suggest, it's all about the ecosystem that comes with the product. The competition does not have a unified ecosystem to offer the consumer, so they do talk product specs. Product specs don't mean squat to anyone except selected nerds. The bulk of the consumers are looking for devices that make their life easier and more enjoyable. That's what motivates most buyers, and Apple makes that appeal without farting out specs. It's all about the experience of the apps, the syncing in the iCloud, the elegance of the design, and the number one customer service. The specs only need to be "good enough" to support the experience. We've left the PC era and its spec wars.

I haven't used the new Galaxy Tab 10.1, so I cannot accurately speak about whether iPad2's graphics are still the best, or just tied with Samsung. I wasn't putting the Kindle in contention with the iPad2, I was giving you an example of a low cost device that has it where it counts. Put a pretty display/monitor in front of the average user and they will be 95% satisfied.

I understand that the Samsung and the Apple tablets have about the same image quality. After all Samsung makes most of the displays. If Apple doubles the resolution, and buys up the bulk of Samsung's production for the next two years or so, then Apple will have the superior display going forward.

The brightness and quality of a display is one spec that will influence a buying decision and Apple is seemingly very aware of that.

Unfortunately, I see the same thing happening with tablets as with phones. So much hardware will be available from so many manufacturers that Apple won't be able to maintain their #1 spot.

I disagree with you on this point. The tablet market seems to be more sensitive to the ecosystem it is part of then the phone market. In the phone market the carrier is part of the package, and then the phone is more of a commodity then is the tablet. What's on sale, what is being being promoted when the buyer walks in the door, is all very important to what the buyer walks out of the carrier store with.

The phone carrier is not likely to be a big influencer in purchases of the tablet product. The consumer is likely to buy directly from Apple or through a store like Best Buy. It's an easy sale for the Best Buy people because they know that the buyer is going to be happy. With a brand X tablet, it's a toss-up and they will need to deal with the unhappy customer.

If even only half again as many manufacturers come out with a tablet as came out with a smart phone, they will struggle mightily to make a case for buying their product as opposed an Apple iPad or another Android tablet. They will not be able to count on the carriers leading with their product as the phone companies won't see the tables supporting a revenue stream like a phone will. Apple's competitors can't match Apple's specs and still have the profit margins to cut a hundred dollars from the price or in any way differentiate themselves from Apple or the rest of the Android pack in any other way. If as many tablet manufacturers came to market with a tablet as now make smart phones, they will drive each other out of business, because Apple will still beat them with a fantastic ecosystem and tens of thousands of high-quality apps.

I disagree. Tablets aren't going to get any bigger than they are. Even the most powerful ones with the most features have accessories that turn them into (surprise) notebook computers. The growth will be eliminating specialization of tasks. A tablet which can pull alternative duty as:
-An e-reader The iPad already does this.
-A digitizer (for drawing and taking notes in class) The iPad already does this.
-A television The iPad already does this.
-A mobile phone There's an app for that, and the iPad can also do a video phone.
-A productivity platform (programming/image editing/etc) The iPad already does this.
-Personal digital storage (modular, so that people can expand if they need to)
Is what they should evolve into. Even so, there is a finite market for such devices. I have no idea what you may be referring to. However, since the iPad will sync with other idevices, and can already communicate with the Apple TV box, it is expandible as is.

One laptop makers catch on and start making ultra-thin laptops then tablets will go the way of the feature-phone.

Balderdash!! I would think that you already know that Apple leads the sale in such ultra-thin laptops with the MBA, while also outselling all other smart phones on the market with the iPhone4 and the two-year-old iPhone3GS (number one and two sold), AND is the number one in tablet sales at the same time. This hardly supports your statement.

There is a strong case for all three, and with the automatic synching through the iCloud they will work excellently together making the competitive brands all the less attractive.

 

[nerdo]

Anyone who wants to argue the only advantage the iPad2 has over the competition is the graphics performance is just trolling. Baltimora talks a lot of rubbish like they are facts, can't even bother trolling his nonsense.

Besides, we know from iPod experience it is not the hardware that makes the difference. It is the total package, and this is something always does better then anyone else.

What actually happened is a bit more complicated then you describe it. Apple was committed to just one of the five carriers in the USA for a long time. Additionally, Apple iPhones were only available through limited numbers of carriers world-wide. One company can only do so much. Even though Apple has sold every iPhone (as well as every iPad) they can make, there is a limit as to what can be done. This has allowed the competitive Android phones to find a ready market.

Even though the iOS is the number two platform at present, Apple's iPhone3GS and iPhone4 are the top two selling phones. So, the consumers do not see the iPhone as equal to the Android phones as you seem to think. For many consumers the iPhone was not available on their carrier of choice. With the new iPhone5 and the opening up of the iPhone to all five USA carriers, consumers will be able to vote with their purchases on a level playing field. The result may surprise many "analysts."

Finally, it's really not about the specs of the hardware, as you suggest, it's all about the ecosystem that comes with the product. The competition does not have a unified ecosystem to offer the consumer, so they do talk product specs. Product specs don't mean squat to anyone except selected nerds. The bulk of the consumers are looking for devices that make their life easier and more enjoyable. That's what motivates most buyers, and Apple makes that appeal without farting out specs. It's all about the experience of the apps, the syncing in the iCloud, the elegance of the design, and the number one customer service. The specs only need to be "good enough" to support the experience. We've left the PC era and its spec wars.



I understand that the Samsung and the Apple tablets have about the same image quality. After all Samsung makes most of the displays. If Apple doubles the resolution, and buys up the bulk of Samsung's production for the next two years or so, then Apple will have the superior display going forward.

The brightness and quality of a display is one spec that will influence a buying decision and Apple is seemingly very aware of that.



I disagree with you on this point. The tablet market seems to be more sensitive to the ecosystem it is part of then the phone market. In the phone market the carrier is part of the package, and then the phone is more of a commodity then is the tablet. What's on sale, what is being being promoted when the buyer walks in the door, is all very important to what the buyer walks out of the carrier store with.

The phone carrier is not likely to be a big influencer in purchases of the tablet product. The consumer is likely to buy directly from Apple or through a store like Best Buy. It's an easy sale for the Best Buy people because they know that the buyer is going to be happy. With a brand X tablet, it's a toss-up and they will need to deal with the unhappy customer.

If even only half again as many manufacturers come out with a tablet as came out with a smart phone, they will struggle mightily to make a case for buying their product as opposed an Apple iPad or another Android tablet. They will not be able to count on the carriers leading with their product as the phone companies won't see the tables supporting a revenue stream like a phone will. Apple's competitors can't match Apple's specs and still have the profit margins to cut a hundred dollars from the price or in any way differentiate themselves from Apple or the rest of the Android pack in any other way. If as many tablet manufacturers came to market with a tablet as now make smart phones, they will drive each other out of business, because Apple will still beat them with a fantastic ecosystem and tens of thousands of high-quality apps.



Balderdash!! I would think that you already know that Apple leads the sale in such ultra-thin laptops with the MBA, while also outselling all other smart phones on the market with the iPhone4 and the two-year-old iPhone3GS (number one and two sold), AND is the number one in tablet sales at the same time. This hardly supports your statement.

There is a strong case for all three, and with the automatic synching through the iCloud they will work excellently together making the competitive brands all the less attractive.

 

[the8thark]

The article talks about total shipments.

We know Apple shipments = sales (We sell every iPad we can make).
But for the others sales could = 10% of shipments? Or some other number.

So the competition can ship as many as they want. No good if you can't get them sold.

 

[Torrijos]

What is also funny is the fact that people don't realize (and analyst won't chew it up for them), is that Apple is a single manufacturer, and one that has been able to keep the profit margin extremely high for the past 13 years.

Even when competing PLATFORMS make a dent it usually isn't at the detriment of Apple. Apple has been selling (to customers) iPhone and iPad as fast as they can produce them, while trying to introduce said products to an increasing number of markets, whenever they can manage to produce enough stock.

Competing platforms are fighting each others for scraps of the lower margin market, while updating models faster (which cost R&D), to try to stop their competitors from getting the upper hand in their segment.

If smartphone are any indication, even when Apple isn't the number 1 OS sold, it is the company selling the most particular models, that's before even thinking about profits.

And then there is the ecosystem, Apple iOS isn't the number 1 OS in the smartphone market, but...
How many of those Android devices have premier hardware capacities (low budget dumbphones with Android count in their OS tally)?
How many different version of Android OS are still sold today?
Both fragmentation problems are a pain for dev companies that want to make a living off that ecosystem.

On the other hand Apple is moving less smartphone but all of theirs are advanced enough to run most software well, and the difference in smartphone sold is easily compensated by iPod Touch and iPad sales. Both good devices for devs.

 

[Hyper-X]

I don't see how Apple tablets will continue to succeed the way they have (in comparison to the iPad and iPad 2) and it's my belief that we may be at the point where it'll start to plateau and slow down in sales.

Not trying to bash iPads or Apple but IMHO I'm quite dissatisfied by all tablet products to date. I've come very close to taking the plunge a few times then I come back to the same issue each time, each product fails to convince me that it'll be a benefit over using my laptop every single time.

iOS has never convinced me that it was the best software choice for the iPad tablets, in fact I can't get over how childish the interface looks and how basic it is in terms of interacting with the device with today's software to include the internet. Sure it's easy to use but IMHO it's at the point where I feel I'm missing out on a lot in comparison to using my laptop. The next innovation I'd like to see is with Apple keeping iOS for their phones and coming out with a real OS for the iPads.

Compare this to a few other products like the Xoom, Lenovo and HP tablets, each of them also have major issues like IMO Honeycomb has the best appearance in terms of what I'm looking for in a tablet, the user interface appears to be very intuitive and from using it I feel like I'm getting the full tablet experience with full multitasking, widgets, the full modern experience. WebOS had great potential but its performance wasn't consistent. Lenovo looks good with a real working USB port but it's come to the party way too late. However Honeycomb isn't snappy like iOS, there's an annoying delay in its response to gestures and that sort of stuff really bugs me. With the other products, I've seen various quality control issues, something I don't see often with iPads.

So what I'm trying to say is that while tablets can get better in terms of hardware, the iPad's real problem IMO is its software (iOS), it's time to dump a boring, uninteresting continuation of circa 2007 (iPod Touch 1) software and come out with something we can actually use for other than just taking notes, reading email, checking Facebook/Twitter, watching movies and surfing the web.

 

[divinox]

If you get rid of the android bars and just show the iPad #'s, Apple's growth appears to plateau and stagnate in year 4. I don't buy this based on the iPod and iPhone growth curves.

Then, when you factor in the competition, which can't yet compete with the iPad, it's hard to extrapolate the exponential growth from current trends.

If a person buys a new tablet every 2 years, this chart seems to suggest that the extreme apple product loyalty will dry up, and iPad will just grow with size of the total market.

I hope Steve is OK... but iPad is more than OK - and this forecast does not make any sense.

Most people wont - ever - switch their tablets every 2 years. Not at current price points at least. Why? Devices that are good enough to day will, for most purposes, be good enough "tomorrow" as well.

 

[RCharel]

Price and profits

As to price and distribution there is and will be a huge difference between phones and the iPad. The iPad will be sold trough Apple’s stores and web sites. All profits will augment Apples gross and net profits. Phones are mostly sold and subsidised by the networks.

None of it’s presumed iPad competitors will have this luxury. Combined with the Apple’s confirmed quality of service it leaves the competition in the dust. Any distributer wants a decent margin on it’s sales to pay for their distribution channel which means that even if the competition can provide their product at the same cost it would still have to be more expensive than the iPad. Either that or lower or non existent profits.

They will have a real decision to make as to whether it will be worthwhile.

 

[divinox]

No one at the time expected Apple to be as successful with the iPods as they were, but then analysts didn't take in account how effective the iTunes store would be in boosting the sales of the iPods. Various journals were also saying that this or that new music player would be the new iPod killer. When the Zune came out it was expected to knock Apple out of the cat-bird seat as well.

What no one seems to "get" is that it's not about the specs of the hardware. Regardless of whether it's an iPod, iPhone, or an iPad, it's the whole user experience which closely integrates the whole ecosystem the product sits within.

Now, with the automatic synching of the iDevices with each other through the iCloud, Apple has just raised the bar higher then the competitors expected. It took Apple several years to build and ready the iCloud infrastructure, it just adds to the mountain the competition needs to climb to compete.



I agree. It's Apple vs 39 other Android licenses, and we haven't even seen the first Windows tablet yet. After the HP debacle with their WebOS tablet, people may be slow to jump on the competitive tablets, including the Windows tablets, because they might not stick around, but most certainly because the competition will lack the apps, the cloud, and whatever else Apple will throw in the mix to keep the competition scrambling to catch up.



I agree. Apple will not let the pot just simmer, they will keep doing what they've done all along and keep raising the ecosystem bar and that will keep the competition off balance and struggling to have relevance in the tablet market.

For example, if the rumors are somewhat accurate, and Apple comes out with a retina display on the iPad3, then they've just moved the spec bar to where the competition can't go as Apple has bought up all the production of these hi-rez screens for a year or two into the future.



He's just trying to keep his job a bit longer. The whole PC industry is sucking air and the netbooks are sucking the worst. Besides the margins are so thin that HP realized that it isn't even possible to "make it up with volume."

I can understand if you look at things with apply eyes, but this? MSFT sold 400 million licenses of W7 in less than 2 years. MSFT still has tons of people on XP looking to upgrade (held back by vista debacle, trust regained in w7 and further strengthened by implementation of XP-vm). MSFT, quite frankly, is not going anywhere. To use terms frequently used by Macrumors-people they have the largest ecosystem, amazing enterprise support, billions of applications etc. Further, MSFT has an outstanding record when it comes to backwards-compatability, and a reputation of being on the developers side in thick and thin (evidenced e.g. by the effort the put into making nice, free, tools, and making it fast and easy to develop).

TL;DR: Windows isnt going anywhere. Nobody in their right mind would ever not buy a MSFT-pad thinking "Will anyone support this in a year?". "N***a please".

----------

As to price and distribution there is and will be a huge difference between phones and the iPad. The iPad will be sold trough Apple’s stores and web sites. All profits will augment Apples gross and net profits. Phones are mostly sold and subsidised by the networks.

None of it’s presumed iPad competitors will have this luxury. Combined with the Apple’s confirmed quality of service it leaves the competition in the dust. Any distributer wants a decent margin on it’s sales to pay for their distribution channel which means that even if the competition can provide their product at the same cost it would still have to be more expensive than the iPad. Either that or lower or non existent profits.

They will have a real decision to make as to whether it will be worthwhile.

with 4g (and other tech's) rolling out well see rapid inclusion of mobile chips into any portable device. for these to do their trick we will (most likely, and unfortunately) still need to rely on carriers. Said carriers will gladly subsidize devices as long as they can a) lock us up b) make money as we use data.

a and b will return "true" for many years to come.

p.s.

im not sure that i get your argument anyway. regardless of make-or-buy decision you still pay. theres no law stating that "making" for Apple is necessarily less expensive than "buying" for e.g. Samsung. In fact, had that been the case (in general) the real world economy would have shown us that - it does not.

----------

I don't see how Apple tablets will continue to succeed the way they have (in comparison to the iPad and iPad 2) and it's my belief that we may be at the point where it'll start to plateau and slow down in sales.

Not trying to bash iPads or Apple but IMHO I'm quite dissatisfied by all tablet products to date. I've come very close to taking the plunge a few times then I come back to the same issue each time, each product fails to convince me that it'll be a benefit over using my laptop every single time.

iOS has never convinced me that it was the best software choice for the iPad tablets, in fact I can't get over how childish the interface looks and how basic it is in terms of interacting with the device with today's software to include the internet. Sure it's easy to use but IMHO it's at the point where I feel I'm missing out on a lot in comparison to using my laptop. The next innovation I'd like to see is with Apple keeping iOS for their phones and coming out with a real OS for the iPads.

Compare this to a few other products like the Xoom, Lenovo and HP tablets, each of them also have major issues like IMO Honeycomb has the best appearance in terms of what I'm looking for in a tablet, the user interface appears to be very intuitive and from using it I feel like I'm getting the full tablet experience with full multitasking, widgets, the full modern experience. WebOS had great potential but its performance wasn't consistent. Lenovo looks good with a real working USB port but it's come to the party way too late. However Honeycomb isn't snappy like iOS, there's an annoying delay in its response to gestures and that sort of stuff really bugs me. With the other products, I've seen various quality control issues, something I don't see often with iPads.

So what I'm trying to say is that while tablets can get better in terms of hardware, the iPad's real problem IMO is its software (iOS), it's time to dump a boring, uninteresting continuation of circa 2007 (iPod Touch 1) software and come out with something we can actually use for other than just taking notes, reading email, checking Facebook/Twitter, watching movies and surfing the web.

W8 is just around the corner. It'll (probably) do the trick for you. :- )

And yes, i agree with you (in ways). As i see it we have two (main) markets. 1) cheap, easy, "incapable" devices at the bottom end. 2) not-so-cheap, able, powerful devices at the higher end. Sure, there will probably be a niche market for "expensive, luxurios, easy, "incapable", but i dont think that is where demand will be. Currently Apple (and to be fair, pretty much everyone else) is selling a type 1 device as a type 2 device. I see that as a problem, long term. Theres no reason why they shouldnt be able to do both though.

 

[Hyper-X]

W8 looks very interesting, but at the moment I'm not all that taken by the tile interface but I understand why they're adopting that style of UI due to how it's much more friendlier towards tablet devices for starters. All I have to go on is the limited reviews by certain websites claiming that it's been (so far) a nice experience working with it.

 

[jonnysods]

Can't wait for iPad 3!

 

[divinox]

W8 looks very interesting, but at the moment I'm not all that taken by the tile interface but I understand why they're adopting that style of UI due to how it's much more friendlier towards tablet devices for starters. All I have to go on is the limited reviews by certain websites claiming that it's been (so far) a nice experience working with it.

Well, as far as the tiles go thats just one screen, your homescreen if you may (which is somewhat inaccurate as you also have your normal desktop-view). Personally, i welcome them (but hardly love them). I do think that the general design elements of Metro are lovely though, especially in (well designed) applications for WP7. Its nice to see something fresh. Reminds me a bit of the work Bonnier did with (Jobs praised) Mag+. Very clever designs.

 

[AaronEdwards]

Can't wait for iPad 3!

Well, the iPad 3 needs to a big improvement to get iPad and iPad 2 owners to buy a new tablet. And it also needs to be inexpensive enough (but not necessarily cheap), to get those who haven't bought a tablet yet to pick it over what the competition is going to make.

Both these things will get even more important with the iPad 4 and the iPad 5...

 

[iEvolution]

There isn't much about a tablet that a PC or computer couldn't do.. really. I don't see how some think these tablet computers will replace PCs. Right now it has novelty but that will soon wear off and the general public won't care about them and they'll look like the iPods are now.

I'm surprised that NO company has challenged them on the price front, $829 for a crippled computer with touch screen as its main feature is ridiculous. Further ridiculous is the pathetic 64GB capacity. Other than the fact my computer can do everything these tablets can and more, price is a real hamper for many of the would-be buyers.