Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Highlights of Apple's 1Q 2011 Conference Call

2 of your points:

notabadname said:
"Just an iPod Touch"; "Will not be good for reading books neither not using the ink technology."
Click to expand...

1)It really is nothing more than a 4x large iPod Touch. Seriously. The iPad may be cool and all, but it's the same experience as the Touch in 99% of the features. I'm not saying the iPad sucks...I'm saying version 1.0 ain't different than a Touch or iPhone. You wanna buy it? Be my guest. But when you actually sit down and compare it to the Touch or iPhone, it's essentially the same experience but with a larger screen. Fine. No hard feelings.

2)Nobody uses the iPad for reading books. Nobody. Magazine articles and websites and "reading" some text for less than 20 mins? Sure. But the Kindle technology blows away the iPad for truly reading books.


We have an iPad...I am extremely eager to see what the 2.0 one offers. Would love Facetime and better screen resolution. Would also like the base model to be 32GB and overall better printer support. Lastly, how about some integration to iLife?! Sheeeez.
 
ericinboston said:
And....what's Cook's answer with how the iPad was designed? It's essentially the iPhone and iPod Touch in a 4x larger screen. I said essentially, people, not "exactly".
Click to expand...

If you take an iPod Touch and gradually increase it in size, it will slowly change from a fine device to your pocket to a ridiculously large device for your pocket to a ridiculously small tablet to a good sized tablet (that's where the iPad is) to a ridiculously sized tablet (think of 14" iPad). What Cook says is that most of the non-Apple devices are on the wrong points of this continuum.

Out of curiosity I googled for "Dell Streak Sales Numbers". Couldn't find any, but this blog (warning: not coffee + keyboard safe):

Ho ho. We pitted the iPhone 4 against the Dell Streak monster Android tablet phone yesterday in our poll, to see which you sided with: the clean UI and burgeoning app ecosystem of Apple’s smartphone, or the epic size and power tinkerer skills of Dell’s first UK handheld. The results? A win for the Streak! Read on for the results breakdown.

We asked which side you feel on, and with a perhaps surprise majority, the Dell Streak cruised to victory, with 59.64 percent of the vote. The iPhone 4 meanwhile garnered 36.14 percent of the vote, meaning just over a third prefer Steve Job’s streamlined approach, while a mere 4.22 percent had a rival platform preference and voted for neither.

Can't wait to see Dell's numbers for calendar Q4 2010.
 
DotCom2 said:
I don't know why they didn't ask about the status of the Data Center.
They did ask about it several quarters back and Apple did answer by saying it was on schedule and probably going online by the end of the year (2010)
SO WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?!:confused::mad:
Click to expand...

dunno. And not a whole lot on app/music sales (which is arguably what this data center is being built to support, along with mobile me stuff).

If _1/4_ of those 365,000 sales a day are 'new' iOS users, then you're looking at 1 million potentially new App store and mobile me customers a week. 13 million a quarter. at $100 a year, that's 5Billion in revenue growth annually, which should pay for that data center in what... 4 months?
 
ericinboston said:
2)Nobody uses the iPad for reading books. Nobody. Magazine articles and websites and "reading" some text for less than 20 mins? Sure. But the Kindle technology blows away the iPad for truly reading books.
Click to expand...

Are people still pushing that lie? How many times do I have to announce that I've read over 100 novels on my iPad for people like you to stop the lie that nobody uses the iPad for reading books.

In the last week, going through my Vonnegut collection, I've read Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, and having started it last night I'm now about halfway through Slaughter-House Five. On my iPad.
 
NebulaClash said:
Are people still pushing that lie? How many times do I have to announce that I've read over 100 novels on my iPad for people like you to stop the lie that nobody uses the iPad for reading books.

In the last week, going through my Vonnegut collection, I've read Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, and having started it last night I'm now about halfway through Slaughter-House Five. On my iPad.
Click to expand...

As a counter example, my wife is an avid reader...burns through a book a week if not sooner. Reads literally hours on end every weeknight.

We got the iPad in May and she tried a few books...she instantly complained her eyes were tired and burning...just too darn bright and yes we tried mucking with the settings.

She later bought a $139 Kindle and loves the thing to death.

You are the only person that I've ever heard that has read books on the iPad. And I'm not calling you a liar.

There are countless articles/forums/opinions that if you are a person who reads...which means for 60+ minutes without taking your eyes away from the screen...the iPad is not a good choice. If you're reading websites or reading for 15 mins at a time, sure, the iPad will be ok.

Lastly, with all the advertising/promotion the iPad has done, reading books gets about 1% of the attention...it's all about apps, games, movies, music, tv shows, email, photos, and more. The fundamentals of the iPad screen need to change in order for it to be loved as an ebook reader.
 
OK, you have a valid counter example with your wife. I'm more aware of it because I've been following the iPad-as-an-ereader threads around here, and lots of folks have my experience: the Kindle strains our eyes, the iPad does not.

I can't begin to imagine why my eyes react differently than your wife's, but they do. So I get irritated when I see dogmatic statements of fact that are simply false. One such statement is that nobody reads books on an iPad (and now you've met someone who does just that, and at a faster pace then even your bookworm wife). Another such statement would be that the iPad is better than the Kindle for books. That statement is true for ME, but clearly not the majority of folks.

So if we allow that there are differences in the world, we can back away from these dogmatic statements. That was my point. I know I'm in the minority, but we're becoming a cranky minority from constantly being told we don't exist! :)
 
0815 said:
Thanks to the reporters for leaving the health issues out of the Q&A session, by doing that you showed some respect of his privacy.
Click to expand...
nsayer said:
Why is that surprising? There's no point asking a question if you're already sure you know what the answer will be.
Click to expand...

I'm sure no one expected any additional information to come out about Steve's health on the call, but it is still surprising that no one even tried to get some reaction out of Tim Cook about Steve's situation! Almost everyone agrees that Steve's capacity has some affect on Apple's future performance in some way, and there continues to be debate about Apple's transparency to shareholders about Steve's health. So don't overestimate the "respectfulness" of financial analysts. I suppose it's possible that participating analysts were notified beforehand that any health questions were off the table.
 
MacRumors said:


- iPad sales skyrocket: Apple's iPad sales of 7.33 million were well above analyst expectations and brought total sales to 14.8 million over the first nine months of availability.
Click to expand...

My favorite part in all of this is going back to Ballmer's statement last year about how Kinect sales would "blow away" ipad sales. Well, they did ship 8 million kinects (which, frankly, for MS is pretty damn good) but that's hardly "blowing away" 7.33 M ipads. Also, we dont really know how many of those kinects were shipped in xbox bundles that still sit on store shelves (though xbox in general does appear to be in low inventory). At any rate, not that you should be comparing the sales of these two items to begin with (Balmer, you bone head), but I'd say the ipad sold nearly on par with kinect. I wonder if Ballmer is "blown away".
 
ericinboston said:
As a counter example, my wife is an avid reader...burns through a book a week if not sooner. Reads literally hours on end every weeknight.

We got the iPad in May and she tried a few books...she instantly complained her eyes were tired and burning...just too darn bright and yes we tried mucking with the settings.

She later bought a $139 Kindle and loves the thing to death.

You are the only person that I've ever heard that has read books on the iPad. And I'm not calling you a liar.

There are countless articles/forums/opinions that if you are a person who reads...which means for 60+ minutes without taking your eyes away from the screen...the iPad is not a good choice. If you're reading websites or reading for 15 mins at a time, sure, the iPad will be ok.

Lastly, with all the advertising/promotion the iPad has done, reading books gets about 1% of the attention...it's all about apps, games, movies, music, tv shows, email, photos, and more. The fundamentals of the iPad screen need to change in order for it to be loved as an ebook reader.
Click to expand...

Count me as somebody who reads a lot on my iPad. I have read around 10 or so books on it and I use it to surf the web for hours at a time. Every person that I personally know of that has an iPad also uses it to read books. I also have a ton of friends that have kindles and love them to death for reading. I would never own a kindle simply because it seems one dimensional to me......but that is simply my opinion.
 
droz said:
I wonder if Ballmer is "blown away".
Click to expand...

Only when a chair bounces off the window and back at him . . .

Seriously though, good point about kinect sales. You could hardly see a Christmas sales story without hearing the kinect was THE hot item this year. Yet the iPad matched it stride for stride.
 
droz said:
My favorite part in all of this is going back to Ballmer's statement last year about how Kinect sales would "blow away" ipad sales. Well, they did ship 8 million kinects (which, frankly, for MS is pretty damn good) but that's hardly "blowing away" 7.33 M ipads. Also, we dont really know how many of those kinects were shipped in xbox bundles that still sit on store shelves (though xbox in general does appear to be in low inventory). At any rate, not that you should be comparing the sales of these two items to begin with (Balmer, you bone head), but I'd say the ipad sold nearly on par with kinect. I wonder if Ballmer is "blown away".
Click to expand...

I don't know why Ballmer was comparing Kinetic against a totally different product, but anyway - Kinetic has been on sale for a lot less longer than the iPad... so in the short time Kinetic has been on the market, the sale figures are very impressive. More kinetic sales in a couple of months than the iPad in almost a year. Kinetic is a more limited market too - only available to XBox owners. I'm very sure the Kinetic style controllers are the way of the future for gaming.

iPad and kinetic sales are both impressive.
 
gnasher729 said:
To put that number into perspective: When the iPad was released, I thought that 10 million in the first complete year would be an absolute success. And that estimate was at the high end. These 14.8 millions are not just a huge number for all the naysayers, they are even a huge numbers for anyone who was optimistic in April 2010.

When I heard the first estimates of 20 million in 2011 I thought it was a ridiculously high number. Now that same number for 2011 would actually be considered not very good at all, because it would mean that growth has stopped. I think Apple would be unhappy with anything less than 28 million iPads in 2011.
Click to expand...

I had similar thoughts to you when it was first announced, I just couldn't see why that many people would want a 'big iPod touch'. That changed when I had a play on one and you could see straight away what an impressive product it was.

I still don't see a need for one for myself, though certain developments are starting to tempt me. :D
 
MacRumors said:
- iOS device sales booming: Apple has now sold over 160 million iOS devices ...
Click to expand...

Just imagine the headlines today if Tony Fadell, head of iPod and iPhone engineering, had gotten his way and Apple had used Linux for the iPhone.

Tablet competition: Apple COO Tim Cook divided existing tablet offerings from competitors into two flavors: Windows-based tablets requiring a keyboard or stylus and
small Android-based tablets running an operating system not designed for the form factor and consequently yielding a "bizarre" scaled-up smartphone experience.
Click to expand...

Dear Tim,

Do you really want to talk about "bizarre scaled-up smartphone experiences"?

If so, let's talk about pixel-doubling iPhone apps on the iPad.

Worse, let's talk about doing that even with "retina" designed iPhone 4 apps.

I mean, congratulations on everything else, but wow.
 
Tim wasn't talking about apps when he mentioned the scaled-up smartphone experience, he was talking about the OS.

The version of Android out there right now is only meant for smartphones. To use it in a tablet format means you have to scale it up.

iOS is meant for whatever format it is running on. It was originally meant for tablets before Apple decided to release the iPhone first.

Nothing strange in what Tim Cook said. It is only the tech commentators and MacRumors posters who misunderstood him. He wasn't talking about apps. Or hardware. He was talking about the OS itself.
 
ericinboston said:
2 of your points:



1)It really is nothing more than a 4x large iPod Touch. . . .. .. .

2)Nobody uses the iPad for reading books. Nobody.
Click to expand...

As to response number 1, really? Look at the Apps available on the iPad that aren't available or supported on the other iOS devices. Just in the area of Document creation/editing and presentation alone, make the iPad a viable alternative to a laptop for many people, including myself. The iPod Touch or iPhone simply cannot fill that bill. It is a simple fact that the iPad is cannibalizing laptop and net-book sales (for Apple and others). The iPod Touch did not. Therefore, your first statement is incorrect. Just because you may not use it for more than you would use an iPod Touch, is not a reflection of the views of the other 14.8 million users or the capabilities of the device.

I have a friend who uses his microwave that sits on his counter for nothing more than a place to store his bread. His failure to use or recognize additional capabilities of his microwave does not mean that a microwave is nothing more than a large breadbox.

As to statement number 2: Really? You have completely discredited yourself. Especially with the absoluteness of the statement, "Nobody". By April, Apple had already sold 600,000 books. The Kindle Reader has been as high as number 5 on the top downloads, and is today number 100 on a massive list of Apps for the iPad. I can assure you, people aren't downloading it to "store their bread".

The Kindle Reader is an excellent reader for the record, and I can see why people like it. It's praise is fully deserved. However, the Kindle as a web browser? It's "experimental" as stated by Amazon, and it is pretty useless. Media? Pictures? The list is long as to what a Kindle does not do, and what "Nobody" actually does on it.

So you can get a device that is a decent or good reader, and a great almost everything else, or you can get a great reader that does almost nothing else. I, personally, like to take ONE device on the road with me thank you.
 
So, iPad naysayers!

Where're your windows NOW, huh?

15 million in 9 months. Incredible.
And all those tech experts said it would probably be hard stressed to reach 4 million in sales. Doofs.
 
blubyu said:
Are these the kind of responses I need to start making to reach "Demi-God" status :confused:
Click to expand...

Sorry sir are we not formal enough for you?

You reach Demi status by contributing to the site through a paid membership. Some people are Demi status with only a few posts because they feel the site is worth supporting
 
Stella said:
I don't know why Ballmer was comparing Kinetic against a totally different product, but anyway - Kinetic has been on sale for a lot less longer than the iPad... so in the short time Kinetic has been on the market, the sale figures are very impressive. More kinetic sales in a couple of months than the iPad in almost a year. Kinetic is a more limited market too - only available to XBox owners. I'm very sure the Kinetic style controllers are the way of the future for gaming.

iPad and kinetic sales are both impressive.
Click to expand...

Those numbers for Ipad were strictly last quarter.

Someone above said 15 million was the number but I read 17 million.

So, no, kinect was nowhere near beating 9 months of sales for the ipad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back