“Right after Apple’s most recent earnings call, where they discussed huge revenue growth and demand for the iPhone and iPad, I started getting some calls from various vendors who were stunned by Apple’s numbers,” Tim Bajarin writes for PC Magazine. “They were especially impressed, as well as concerned, by Apple’s COO Tim Cook’s statement that Apple had the ‘mother of all backlogs’ when it came to meeting the demand for iPad 2.”
“Of course, the tablet market is hot right now, and Apple’s lead is quite troubling for the competitors,” Bajarin reports. “Many have told me that they fear Apple could ‘iPod’ the market, meaning that Apple could end up being the dominant player in tablets, as it has been in mobile MP3 players. And these concerned vendors often ask what it will take to challenge Apple and keep Apple from dominating the majority of the tablet market in the future.”
“In a recent column ‘How Apple Outsmarts its Competitors,’ I pointed out that while Apple’s competitors can match it feature-for-feature at the hardware level, Apple’s real magic is in the software and services it ties to its devices. But its advantage actually goes even deeper. Apple controls the hardware, software, services and ecosystem that it ultimately delivers to its customers,” Bajarin writes. “The vendors don’t like to hear this, but I tell them that owning the hardware, software, and services is key to competing against Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
Clueless! “Apple could end up being the dominant player in tablets …”. Do they think that Apple hasn’t already dominated the tablet market? They need to stop drinking that Cool-Aid and just look around. Maybe watch what the talking heads are holding on TV. Stop by a university, church, airport, …
Would you love to know who this idiot thinks dominates the tablet market now.
What they are saying is that Apple is now enjoying the first mover’s advantage, and if nobody else steps up, they will convert that first mover’s advantage into a permanent dominant position.
Nobody is implying that anyone else is dominating right now. The iPod example confirms that: iPod dominated practically from the first day, and never ceded the dominant position. At this point, iPad is on the exact same path.
If they consider Apple to be the first mover they’re still wrong. Apple stepped into the floundering tablet business 10 years after Microsoft pioneered the concept and partnered with hardware vendors who produced flop after flop. In the case of the iPod there was more of an existing marketplace for MP3 players.
Hallo! Hallo!
Anybody home?
Something not right here.
Looks like the lights are on, but nobody’s home.
Just dropped by to tell you the news.
It’s 2011 buddy, you’re a decade out of synch.
“Many have told me that they fear Apple could ‘iPod’ the market…”
News to would-be tablet competitors – Apple already has iPodded you once again with the iPad. As usual, you are coming too late with too little.
“duh’ – ya think?
No shit, Sherlock!
sounds like a Sony press release to me.
“Of course, the tablet market is hot right now, and Apple’s lead is quite troubling for the competitors,”….
what competitors?
the amount of self-delusion among Apple competitors is incredible. Did you see the Playbook ad that announced the Playbook with “Amateur Hour is Over”? REALLY? We can all finally ditch our pretend, amateur tablets because RIM is finally here?!
Worth a look:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/04/28/rim-declares-amatuer-hour-is-over/
What they mean is only the IT folks will be able to help you.
Go back in time, lookup Atari 2600, Commodore 64, I could go on and on. Those who control the whole package (and do a good job) win.
Nuff said.
The PC industry is used to putting out POS products, and winning anyway…. competing against the iPad is a whole new ball of wax for these guys.
“Of course, the tablet market is hot right now, and Apple’s lead is quite troubling for the competitors…”
WRONG. The iPad market is hot. After years, the tablet market never took off.
It’s time to stop putting the iPad in that category. Clearly, iPad stands alone.
When they say ‘iPod’ the market they don’t mean just dominate it with marketshare. Windows doesn’t ‘iPod’ the OS market.
The definition should be along the lines of: to enter a market with a device that is so advanced and so many generations ahead of what is currently available, that it effectively can be perceived as inventing it. The result being that it is futile to even compete in it.
If Apple were around at the dawn of manned flight, they’d enter the aerospace market shortly after the Wright Brothers took flight with 747 passenger jets, an airline, and with airports already built.
This is a very good analogy. I would also add that Apple’s “competitors” think, for some arcane reason, that Apple is building two winged paper planes and not the airplanes and airports they actually are. Can anyone explain why these other companies are so de-connected from reality?
Very true. And I think it’s a lot more distinct in this situation, because ‘competitors’ had 10 years to dick around with tablets and they never got anywhere. Apple comes along with their first one (after spending that 10 years perfecting it rather than opening their prototyping process to guinea pig customers) and shuts the rest of the industry down. Suddenly these competitors, who should have had this vast decade of first-mover advantage, look like snot nosed upstarts.
@ChrissyOne wrote: “Suddenly these competitors look like snot nosed upstarts.”
Oh my, the imagery this conjures up. But very well put.
I think the key to the verb “iPod” is not simply market share or brisk sales figures. It is a product that consumers passionately want to use. Windows did not “iPod” the OS market because its market share was due to lock-in and inertia, not to consumer desire.
Also missing in this analysis is the tidal wave of law suits against Google’s OS from many companies from whom it stole the software, etc. When all the results of there different suits is felt there will be little left of this OS. To paraphrase MDN: Dead OS Walking!
Apple has iProdded the market.
The would-be competitors should be more worried they are Zuning their side of the tablet market.
basic View:
Charles Moore, is it really you?
What the hell is this incoherent crap?
I really can’t say; it’s in Flash and my Mac doesn’t do flash.
Bajarin writes. “The vendors don’t like to hear this, but I tell them that owning the hardware, software, and services is key to competing against Apple.”
And what the vendors should be REALLY worried about is the next time Steve Jobs is on stage and says, “But there is one more thing.”
Right now, today, somewhere on the Apple Campus work is in progress on the next big thing. And it seems to me that each time they do this they get better and better at destroying the rest of the potential market on day one by being so far ahead of them they will never catch up.
I can’t wait for the next big thing out of Apple!
Al Gore invented the iPad and killed ObL today. LOL
AND saved the world from Global Warming
They’ll certainly “ipod” the tablet market if they broaden their ipad offerings. Making a $399 6-7 inch wifi version would definitely be “ipoding” here, although I don’t think people would buy too many of them considering an iPod Touch is basically a 4 inch WIFI iPad.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a mid-sized tablet released by Apple after they see full size iPad sales level off.
That would make it more of a pain in the ass as a developer, since neither existing screen size would work, and you’d have to create a third. This is exactly what Android developers are complaining about lately. I don’t think it will happen for a while.
I also think that maybe the tablet-market is really an “iPad”-market now – and chances are that any company that wants to make money in it may better have a “plan b” where they produce add-ons and cases and stuff like that.
In case you want to beat Apple, you must be very early – and with flawless execution.
Asus was OK with EEE netbooks – but the hardware was shit and the OS was shit. And it didn’t get better over time.
Apple just had to wait and undercut them with the iPad. And now they’re siphoning-off all the profit that was in the ultra-portable market with the MBA.
Acer is doomed IMO.
If you’re a PC/laptop manufacturer and can’t live off enterprise-sales entirely, you’re doomed.
Hey didn’t this guy ever hear of “vertical integration”?
“It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.”
W. Gates Feb 2010
I can’t imagine Microsoft being happy about becoming shut out of the big growth sector in the IT industry. Maybe on second thoughts, Bill Gates might wish that Microsoft had done it.
And these concerned vendors often ask what it will take to challenge Apple and keep Apple from dominating the majority of the tablet market in the future.
I dunno, maybe be innovative and do your best to get to the next big innovation first, instead of sitting on your butt waiting for Apple to do all the hard work?
Seriously, the “tablet” market is really the “iPad” market. Apple invented the app-driven, touch screen handheld tablet. Everything else on the market can honestly be called an iPad ripoff. And these companies are wondering why they can’t compete?
——RM
Too late. Apple has already pulled an “iPod” with iPad.
In fact, the current iPad situation actually favors Apple much more than during the first THREE years of iPod. During the first year of iPod, it only worked with Macs and a FireWire connection was needed (the iPod had a FireWire port instead of the dock connector). Those requirements limited the potential audience. It was not until the 3rd gen iPod that Windows users with USB were supported at all; that support was “kludgy” (third-pary non-iTunes “jukebox” software and a weird two-ended docking cable that had to be connected to the USB port AND to a FireWire power adapter). It was not until the 4th gen iPod that Windows had a version of iTunes and a USB docking cable.
iPad was completely accessible to Mac and Windows customers from Day One.
Good point ken1w …..
Competitors tablets will sell, just like the Zune and other wanna be iPods sold or sell, just not very many ……
“Right after Apple’s most recent earnings call, where they discussed huge revenue growth and demand for the iPhone and iPad, I started getting some calls from various vendors who were stunned by Apple’s numbers,”
There’s the problem, dumb ass vendors calling an analyst for advice.
The mother of all backlogs, has a nice ring to it!