Haha, that's a good point. I wonder if Samsung is counting the free Galaxy Tab's they give with big screens as "sales!"
Fact: No tablet on earth is providing any real competition for the iPad.
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Remaining iPad Competitors
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Haha, that's a good point. I wonder if Samsung is counting the free Galaxy Tab's they give with big screens as "sales!"
Fact: No tablet on earth is providing any real competition for the iPad.
i am not trolling here. please don't take this the wrong way. i simply think you continue to pursue a very, very narrow vision of ipad's competitors, and it goes against the facts that are easily available in any media source.
fact=your opinion.
no tablet on earth=i think we can just say no tablet here. no need to specify that you aren't referring to the fabulous tablets available on the homeworld of the Autobots. how many of the shipping and sales figures have you seen?
real competition=what does this mean? in japan the galapagos tablet appears to be selling quite well. it should. it costs a little over a dollar. the samsung tablets are selling quite well in korea. asus is selling quite well around the world. hp is set to sell at least half a million. no. i don't have sales figures for any company, including apple. they don't release them (apple sporadically releases carefully worded ones with lots of qualifications), so i don't see why you keep insisting that people provide them.
if you limit your perspective to a one-on-one battle between apple and other manufacturers, competing sales numbers are low. but, if you expand your perspective, as i have recommended throughout this thread, i think you'll realize that in aggregate, competing tablets are beginning to make inroads. the operating system is the obvious unit of comparison we ought to be using, and in this case, i think we are seeing a shift in the market, especially coming from google. i think we can expect apple's market share to fall considerably, just as it did with the phone, as new iterations of competitor's tablets hit the market.
again, this doesn't mean there is something "wrong" with apple. rather, it is about having numerous devices for numerous needs and wants. there are competitors, and that is why apple takes them to court, mentions them as competitors in their own presentations, and vigorously promotes their products.
i don't understand what is at stake for you in making this claim over and over again that the ipad has no competitors. apple thinks it has them. why do you think it doesn't?
The current generation of tablets was hastily conceived and - as is the usual problem with companies that modify software created by others (WebOS included in its current implementation) lacks the integration that is a strong selling point for the iPad. It's unfair to tout the Touchpad as a successful seller because they had to drop the price well below cost to liquidate their inventory. As for the others, they're achieving a level of limited success.
So in all fairness, the current competition is lacking. However, the better builders will learn from their mistakes and offer more competitive models going forward (as will Apple). So I'm not screaming that the iPad is kicking everyone's butt, but it's not unfair to suggest that the competition to date is humdrum.
it is fair. i thought we were talking about competitors. a lot of people who might have bought ipads bought hp tablets (not surprisingly, as a huge number of people want a tablet and are mainly interested in email and web surfing, so this is a great deal for them). if someone who is interested in tablets chooses an hp instead of an ipad, isn't this competition?
i don't think it is unfair to call the competition humdrum, but i think it is incorrect. there are thinner, lighter, and in some cases more capable (for certain uses) competitors out there. i am actually quite excited about a lot of the competitors, and my next tablet may be one of them. i don't know yet. now that the google marketplace has some decent productivity apps and pdf reading apps, i am curious. it all depends on what is available when i upgrade.
i don't think they were hastily conceived. companies are pouring time and effort into tablets, and in some cases, they have been doing so for many years. there are lots of reasons why sales have been lackluster for some of the manufacturers. i think people are looking for some kind of monolithic apple opponent, and when they don't find one, they dismiss the competition. but, microsoft and google sell software, and manufacturers make devices. the more these start meshing together, the smaller the gap between apple and its competitors will become, but i do not think we are likely to see any single manufacturer with sales numbers close to apple's anytime soon. that doesn't mean the competition is bad. it is fragmented, though, and needs to be seen in aggregate.
Again, you seem to be talking about potential rather than the current state of affairs. We're still at ground zero as far as tablets are concerned. This is a new and growing market and there will be decent competition out there, possibly with the next generation, but it has not yet been realized.
And come on, HP was effectively giving away their product because even at a $100 discount below iPad pricing they couldn't sell very many. It's like saying that there were people outside a candy store giving away Twizzlers and because of that the store sold fewer Snickers bars that day. To then conclude that Twizzlers are an effective competitor is scientifically unsound.
No. I am talking about today. Competitors have chewed up several million potential Apple customers so far. That is not insignificant. As for HP, just because they are willing to sell their product at a huge loss doesn't lessen its impact in terms of sales. I don't think their apparent lack of a long-term strategy bodes well for the future of the device, but for the next year or two, consumers who bought them will potentially continue using them and not purchase an Apple device. That is a big deal.
Again, everyone keeps looking for the iPad killer. When you have a bunch of little ones nibbling away at your market share, the effect is not as obvious as it would be with two monolithic competitors, but it is there nonetheless.
That's not competition, in fact, it's what is commonly referred to as an "anti-competitive practice" (i.e. "dumping"). If HP hadn't announced it was dropping the TouchPad line and discontinuing WebOS development then it could have been facing some serious legal action.
Competition means giving a consumer a viable alternative absent an unfair advantage. Liquidating a $500 product at $99 isn't "competing." You have no idea what the cross-section of purchasers was or whether a significant proportion would have realistically purchased iPads.
Well, not quite. The practice of "dumping" is regulated (to the extent that it is regulated) by international trade treaties and national laws. If HP were so inclined it could have continued to sell its $99 Touchpads indefinitely, at least in the US. (The reasons that HP dropped the TouchPad are a separate issue and have more to do with internal politics at HP than with whether the device itself was a viable long-term rival to the iPad.)
Second, the question of whether TouchPad purchasers "would have realistically purchased iPads" is a red herring. A potential market is not a fixed number. If a tablet manufacturer expands a market by attracting customers who would not "realistically purchase" a product from a competitor, it doesn't make it any less "competition."
The point is not simply academic. It's entirely possible that Amazon will introduce a tablet in the fall selling for about $300. Its direct "competitor" will be the Nook Color from Barnes and Noble. But in a larger sense, it may well expand the market for "tablets" to consumers who would not purchase an iPad, either because of its cost or because its features exceed what those consumers want to pay for. Even if Apple does not lose a single sale to an Amazon "tablet" (aka Kindle 4), the tablet market will be larger AND more competitive.
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You've eliminated any meaning the word 'competition' might have, especially in the context of 'competition for Apple'.
If the potential customers for the iPad and a Kindle 4 are non-intersecting domains and the products have zero causal effect on each others' sales then I have no idea how this situation is 'more competitive' or how such a description is of any consequence.
It is literally the same as saying that sellers of apples and sellers of oranges, when their sales do not affect each other, makes the fruit market more competitive.
This is total nonsense, because it uses 'more competitive' to refer to a situation where you have two independent variables that are linked only because someone subsumed them to the term 'tablet'. It's no different than saying 'the market for blue aircraft becomes more competitive when a new blueberry seller starts up shop. Granted, those who buy blueberries would never buy a blue aircraft, but the market for blue products is larger AND more competitive.'
i don't think we agree on what competition, competitive, or dumping means.
when two or more sellers "compete" with one another to convince a consumer to part with his cash, they are competitors. hp considers ipad to be a competitor. tech writers consider hp to be a competitor. why don't you? admittedly, their days seem to be numbered, but that is beside the point. today, they are competitors.
obviously, i do not have a detailed analysis of consumers. i don't even know sales numbers. no one here does, unless they have been paying market researchers for the information. companies don't release that information. my brain is not terribly good, but i think it is entirely logical to say that these consumers purchasing tablets chose it over the ipad. they probably did not do so over quality, but were persuaded by price.
it seems likely to me that a lot of people want a tablet, but only to do email or the web, so the hp is perfectly adequate for their needs. in this sense, apple is facing tough competition (as experts predicted) from lower cost tablets. they offer an arguably better product, but at a price (some) consumers are unwilling to pay. how many that amounts to remains to be seen. if hp keeps producing tablets (even at a loss) or amazon jumps into the market, then the gains other manufacturers have already made will be multiplied several times over.
If those customers who buy lower cost tablets are unwilling to pay for an iPad then their purchase of those tablets has zero effect on Apple's sales.
Those lower cost tablets might as well be garbage bags or diamond rings or baseballs: they are literally a separate market from the iPad. It's not tough competition at all, any more than aircraft carrier manufacturers are facing tough competition from canoe manufacturers.
To say they are making gains which may be multiplied several times over still amounts to zero competition for the iPad or Apple if they are not taking sales away from them. It's only verbal sleight-of-hand which then can spin it and say 'look, these are both tablets, look at all the competition in the tablet market' when this market is, by your own description, split into two independent categories.
good point. in terms of market share, though, apple would have lost the sale. presumably, those people would be saving up for one or hoping to receive it as a gift or something.
speaking as an ipad owner, though, i'd be willing to get a 99 dollar hp tablet instead of an ipad 3 when it's time to upgrade. that's nothing against the ipad, but for my uses, it may well be enough. a 99 dollar android would be a very tempting device. i imagine a lot of people would feel this way.
same market, different price point. bmws and honda fits are the same market, right? if only bmws were available, i might save up for one, but thankfully i don't have to. i have lower price options.
good point. like the laptop market, desktop market, and so forth. apple's share is limited. perhaps we'll see a similar phenomenon when the market is fully mature. apple will have a percentage, but not the majority.
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i don't know. that was my question. the tone and content of his posts suggests that the ipad has no competition at all. if he'll concede that the ipad has competitors, then i guess we are in agreement.
so, we all think apple is obviously the dominant manufacturer at the moment, but it clearly has competition that has gained market share and stands poised to potentially gain much more?
i don't know. that was my question. the tone and content of his posts suggests that the ipad has no competition at all. if he'll concede that the ipad has competitors, then i guess we are in agreement.
so, we all think apple is obviously the dominant manufacturer at the moment, but it clearly has competition that has gained market share and stands poised to potentially gain much more?
i just want to say that this has not been my experience. 90% of anyone i meet is interested in only the iPad. they are content waiting for stock (for some people, months!) than buying a competitor. there are a surprising number of people who for some reason don't like apple, but are getting an iPad anyway.
the only people i've seen interested in other tablets are those who will not buy apple products for one reason or another. they would never have bought an iPad no matter what "competition" there was.
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i guess what i'm trying to say is that it doesn't seem like a commodity market. i find that people are very polarized into iPad and "not iPad" segments.
Those who own tablets, usually have iPads, but I have also seen Galapagos, Samsung, and others here and there in the wild.
Those who don't own tablets are either unable to justify spending over five hundred dollars for any gadget that (in many eyes) only plays games, or are quite satisfied with the performance delivered by their smart phones.
There seems to be a lot more interest in tablets among non-owners, but a shocking number of people cannot even distinguish between a Kindle DX and an iPad. I think a lot of potential customers who have interest in tablet devices remain woefully uninformed about them and unaware of the options available to them.
I have met very few people who are polarized in the way you mentioned Perhaps it is a US phenomenon. Rather, they don't understand what all of the hype is about, they cannot get their hands on the other tablets they have seen advertised, and they are still trying to figure out what a tablet does (nevermind the os).
As tablet prices fall for Android clones, I think we will continue to see reports of sold out products and greater market penetration. Asus, for example, has had a lot of success with their rollout, but have simply been unable to meet demand. They are said to be selling several hundred thousand a month.
As Palpatine points out, the problem stems from a disagreement over what the word "competition" means in this context. At its heart the difference is over whether market competition is a zero-sum game. You contend it is, but that's a misrepresentation of how market economics works.
If, in fact, a market consists of a fixed number of consumers and a rigid product definition then the gains of any one manufacturer equals the losses of all other manufacturers. That's a zero-sum game. And if the market for tablets consisted only of those who want to purchase a product virtually identical to an iPad in terms of functionality, form factor, etc., a zero-sum model would be a rough approximation of what goes on. But that is not the case for this market category.
Instead, the "tablet" category is more reasonably defined as devices that enable a user to access media content, maintain personal information/data, engage in specific modes of communication and create content in a form factor that is reasonably portable.
You're correct that the definition and scope of the term "tablet" is central here. But while you've criticized the practice of "someone" defining the term tablet in subjective manner, you've done precisely the same thing by implicitly assuming that a tablet is defined by exact features, form factor, and price of the iPad.
In effect, and I hope I'm not misconstruing your point, you're contending that unless a consumer wants the same features/form factor as an iPad and is willing to pay the same price, the purchase of another device does not count as "competition." That would be true in a strict zero-sum game but it's not a very useful concept in economics.
Yes, you completely misconstrue my point, as I have never said that markets (or market competition) are a zero-sum game. I'm only looking at the implications of what the posters I've replied to have written.
If one category of buyers and sellers of goods and services has no effect on another category of buyers and sellers (as people have asserted), leading to no market forces resulting on each other, then there is no use in saying that this scenario is 'increased competition' among them, because 'increased competition' doesn't describe any change in the state of affairs. If cost or feature differentiation between products results in changing the behavior between companies or changes sales, then there is competition even when products or not identical. But posters have explicitly said that this is not the case, that $99 tablets do not affect iPad success at all!
I haven't defined the tablet market as that which is identical to the iPad, I assume the market is made up of goods and services among which an individual consumer selects when making an exchange. If $99 tablet buyers would never have ever bought an iPad (or vice-versa), which is what people have written, then it doesn't matter if they appear as technological equivalents.
It might make sense to talk about a tablet market as you define it to compare it to another market (cars or real estate) but the thread is about Apple's competition. Products which have no effect on Apple's sales or pricing or behavior are in no meaningful way competition for them, and yet people I've replied to have only argued the reverse, that because they are similar they broaden the market, and markets are defined by competition, so presto, Apple has competition with the caveat that this competition exerts zero effect on Apple. What? The presence of more variables which have no effect but are aggregated nominally ('tablets') generate no economic effect on Apple, and are thus as much competition as donuts and breadboxes. If someone wants to argue that a tablet has shown losses or effects on Apple that's a different discussion.
If one category of buyers and sellers of goods and services has no effect on another category of buyers and sellers (as people have asserted), leading to no market forces resulting on each other, then there is no use in saying that this scenario is 'increased competition' among them, because 'increased competition' doesn't describe any change in the state of affairs. If cost or feature differentiation between products results in changing the behavior between companies or changes sales, then there is competition even when products or not identical. But posters have explicitly said that this is not the case, that $99 tablets do not affect iPad success at all!
I haven't defined the tablet market as that which is identical to the iPad, I assume the market is made up of goods and services among which an individual consumer selects when making an exchange. If $99 tablet buyers would never have ever bought an iPad (or vice-versa), which is what people have written, then it doesn't matter if they appear as technological equivalents.
It might make sense to talk about a tablet market as you define it to compare it to another market (cars or real estate) but the thread is about Apple's competition. Products which have no effect on Apple's sales or pricing or behavior are in no meaningful way competition for them, and yet people I've replied to have only argued the reverse, that because they are similar they broaden the market, and markets are defined by competition, so presto, Apple has competition with the caveat that this competition exerts zero effect on Apple. What? The presence of more variables which have no effect but are aggregated nominally ('tablets') generate no economic effect on Apple, and are thus as much competition as donuts and breadboxes. If someone wants to argue that a tablet has shown losses or effects on Apple that's a different discussion.
As often happens in threads like this differences in perspective turn into misunderstandings which in turn become flames. The following is not meant in that spirit, at all. Just an attempt at clarification.
Try this hypothetical. Producer A introduces product X. He sells 100 units per month on an ongoing basis. Producer B then introduces product X'. It is in many ways similar to X but it has some different features and a different form factor. It sells at a different price, either more or less than X. After a few months B is selling 50 units a month. A continues to sell 100 units per month.
What does this say about "competition" and "market share?"
From one perspective the product space for X-like products now contains two products (X and X'). In terms of market share, A has gone from 100% to 67%. An observer might reasonably suggest that there is greater "competition" in the X-like product space. But that is because the actual market has increased from 100 to 150 unit sales per month. (That is the sense in which a zero-sum model is inappropriate when a market is growing.)
On the other hand, A continues to sell 100 units of X per month. One might argue that they have not lost a single sale to B. Only a survey of X' purchasers would determine if this were true. That's the danger of trying to draw conclusions about the cells of a table when the only data are the marginal totals.
And if it turns out that none of the X' purchasers would purchase X under any circumstances, Producer A (and its fans) might argue there is no "competition" for X since (a) X continues to sell at the same rate and (b) X' isn't really a competitor because the features of X define the X-like product space while the features of X' put it into another category, altogether.
From what I can tell, these are the different perspectives discussed here.
The title of this thread (Remaining iPad Competitors) fails to define what exactly is being discussed. (Not surprisingly.) From a "tablet market" perspective (broadly defined) it's very likely that the iPad will lose market share (and is already doing so.)
From Apple's own perspective, that is relatively unimportant as long as sales remain steady or increase over time. The company does not gauge its success in terms of market share but in unit sales. It's certainly true that if alternatives don't exist iPad sales might increase even faster as the market size increases, but at the end of the day the company's success is assessed in terms of what it sells, not what it might have sold if the world were different.