iPad’s days are numbered, says Adobe CEO

85 Comments

“And we have a hat trick!” Mike Schuster reports for Minyanville. “After Dell’s global head of marketing Andy Lark used fuzzy math to say iPad will fail, after HP’s European head Eric Cador said the HP TouchPad will be “number one plus,” we have Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen saying the Apple iPad will eventually fall to Android in the near future.”

“Sitting down with tech curmudgeon Walt Mossberg at the All Things Digital D9 conference… things got a little heated when Mossberg addressed Cupertino’s refusal to run Adobe’s Flash platform on iOS devices,” Schuster reports. “Narayen responded: ‘There are a lot of misperceptions out there. When it first broke, people talked about the fact that they thought it was a technology issue, and I think it’s become fairly clear over the last year that it’s not about the technology: It’s about a business model issue. It’s about control of a platform. It’s the control of the app store that’s really at issue here. The value proposition Flash has is that we allow people to author programs once and get them to as many devices as possible. We’ve done that with Android. We will have 130 million phone devices that will have Flash on them by the end of the year.'”

Schuster reports, “Mossberg then took the wind out of the CEO’s sails by saying, ‘And I have yet to test a single one where Flash works really well. I’m sorry. They struggle on those Android devices.'”

MacDailyNews Take: Note to lesser tech CEOs: When being interviewed by Mossberg, wear a cup.

Schuster reports, “He sees the future of the iPad’s competitors to closely follow the trajectory of iPhone competitors. ‘What you saw with smartphones hitting an inflection point with Android, you’ll see it again with tablets,’ Narayen said.”

MacDailyNews Take: Disregarding major differences, such as requiring a carrier or not, is not conducive to making sound predictions, Flash-boy.

Schuster reports, “Looking at the numbers now, the iPad is so far in the lead. As of last month, Apple’s tablet had an 82% market share. Its closest competitor was the Samsung Galaxy Tab with 4%, followed by the Dell Streak at 3% and the Motorola Xoom at 2%. That’s a long way to the top. Even iPad’s competitors have cut back on production — building fewer tablets than originally planned — something which J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz called a ‘dose of reality.'”

“I’m not saying iPad won’t ever fall behind a glut of Android tablets, or even a single device,” Schuster writes. “But it’s difficult to envision a scenario when that’ll happen any time soon.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Disregarding major differences, such as requiring a carrier or not, is not conductive to making sound predictions, Flash-boy.</blockquote

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" and “sleiii” for the heads up.]

85 Comments

  2. Lol.
    Days are numbered.. I think he meant to say everyone else’s tablet’s days are numbered.

    Side note… The mdn notification… Is it just me or is that sound annoying? Needs to be standard sound. (need to check if it can be changed on my end I guess)

    Reply

    1. I thought the same thing. I think it’s likely that they are just regurgitating that —android tablets shipped (and sitting in warehouses & stockrooms collecting dust) Vs iPads (actually) sold— figure that was conjured up a couple months ago.

      If you look at tablets in use (via various methods) the iPad usually come out above 90% of the market (above 95% in some metrics)

      Reply

    2. It is too low, those stats are for shipments, not sales. Most of the other device makers were launching, meaning they have to fill the channel for the first time. That’s an artificial bump to their numbers. The true sales shares would have the iPad higher.

      Reply

  6. By “misperceptions”, this dude means What Steve Jobs explicitly said in an open letter.

    iPad may very well lose the lead in overall tablet marketshare one day. However, as with iPhone, Apple does not have to have >50% share to be a powerful force in that market nor to profit from it. They need enough share and advantages, eg large customer base, to keep developers interested.

    Reply

  7. Good one Walt! These guys just loooove talkin’ smack against Apple. Yeah, the iPad will be knocked off it’s throne, and day now, just like the iPod was..

    Reply

    1. I think that these CEOs train their RDFs on themselves, while SJ trains it on his customers. Then again, his stuff works theirs doesn’t. IMHO for most companies being sociopathic and delusional are requirements for the CEO position.

      Reply

  10. Any Android tablet with Honeycomb 3.1, Tegra 3 running Flash 10.3 for $300. End to iPad dominance in 3 months. Apple shares are down today as investors dump stock before WWDC anticipating disastrous iCloud announcement in 3 days.

    Reply

      1. Andy Droyid is a Mac fan just pretending to be a nutcase for fun. Right? Right? Please tell me I’m right. Nobody is that delusional are they? (Well, Ballmer, Narayen, the RIM twins…)

        Reply

        1. yup…I’m that delusional…….you guys are idots. The facts are simple – buy an ipad – see nothing – its that simple.
          Why? because Steve is a greedy fuck AND because he’s an asshole. HE doesn’t like it – so that’s it.
          Apple is ALWAYS doing things like they’re the freekin CIA – I wonder why? Could it have anything to do with the fact that most ppl. would likely react to what they’re doing in the same way they’d react to finding out what the CIA is up to? Just sayin…..
          Nope…I used to LOVEEEEEE my mac…& then the shine wore off, but I kept loyal, again and again and again.
          No more….Mac =’s Window experience at Lexus prices.
          Nah, I think HP and Android can’t POSSIBLY be worse than this crap – and for a HELL OF A LOT LESS too.
          Yup, just waiting till I can justify the expence & I’m am never going near a mac component again unless its with a bat in my hand.
          mac user come to his senses

    5. I’m afraid the only use you’ll get out of that $300 Android tablet will be to stuff it up your ass while it’s running pornographic Flash movies in the background and pretend you’re having sex Droidboy.

      Reply

    6. I`ve heard all the “just you wait” noise all before, still waiting, no scratch that, gave up waiting a loong time ago. Show me what you got NOW, as the old saying goes, “shit or get off the pot”

      Don`t you guys ever get tired of being consistently wrong?
      Not that I mind the laugh, thanks!

      Reply

    7. Yeah, because the race to the bottom has been so good to PC assemblers. Your argument is that it will work with tablets is wrong. The problem no one is mentioning is that with the saturation of iPad (growing everyday) most people do or soon will know someone with an ipad, and you can bet they are going to play with it, be amazed and then when they touch an android hot mess they will see it for what it is CHEAP CRAP. Yeah you will always have penny pinchers buying commodity garbage, but the don’t bring developers, or keep the companies alive. They get the privilege of showing other what they don’t want.

      Reply

  11. I normally try not to be offensive.

    But this guy is such a fscking know-nothing bozo that he really should keep his fscking mouth shut.

    My suggestion is that he focus on his own job and his own products: 6.375% sales growth per year since he took the helm, near-flat income and 8% decline in market cap.

    Reply

  12. Does he get that it’s not just the iPad itself that’s the problem. Doesn’t he understand that people are making long term commitments when they buy into the platform. People are buying music, movies and oh yeah APPS, that they’ll want around for a long while.

    Does he think the people buy iPads now are going to magically switch to android?

    Reply

    1. This is a great observation. The first mover advantage that Apple gained will not easily be lost because people will be accustomed to and anchored to the platform. As MDN has always said, the iPad is like the iPod. Use that as your model to see how this will play out.

      Reply

      1. Yes, now add in the screen time they had with ipad, now stick an android tablet in their hands, watch em wince, squirm, and curse. I’ve seen it first hand, it is real, most people do not want Android, they want cheaper. Once they experience the IOS eco-system, they want more. True users of IOS will be disappointed by Android 9 out of ten times. Unless you are an Apple-hater, or a propeller-head linux person you will not find a value proposition beyond the initial outlay with Android.

        Reply

      2. Even worse/better;
        Apple does NOT have the “first mover advantage”.
        Microsoft has been squirting out commercially available tablet computers for years.
        YEARS.

        Almost a decade after the first tablets were brought to market, Apple came out with a different, better design, and showed everyone else the right way to do “tablet”.

        “Apple came out with a different, better design,”
        Wow, did I just type the understatement of the decade?

        Reply

  13. No carrier involved! So the total of Android tablets will be lower than iPad sales.
    This will look a lot more like what happened with the iPod than with the iPhone.

    Reply

  15. Adobe was complaining about no Flash on the iPhone and yet it was not even ready for deployment and still isn’t quite ready. What did Adobe want Apple to do…………….just wait?

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    2. So pointing out that Flash still stinks to high heaven on mobile devices isn’t allowed then? Are we supposed to join Adobe’s CEO in denying the plain reality that everyone can see?

      Flash on mobile is *still* a buggy battery drain and resource hog, four years after the iPhone made it clear how much work Adobe had to do. What have they been doing all this time? Seems like they’ve mostly been just puffing their chests out and continuing to peddle vaporware (“It’ll work just fine real soon! Just wait for the next release!”) while making claims their products can’t back up.

      Reply

      1. To be fair, Adobe didn’t have to just fix Flash. They also had to confront and help retrain the idiots that use Flash to build websites and code games.

        I hear they’ve got Flash in fairly good shape.

        The coders of Flash websites and games, not-so-much.

        Reply

  19. We will have 130 million phone devices that will have Flash on them by the end of the year.

    Which year? Adobe has been promising this for several years now. (OK, maybe not the number, but that Flash will be working on mobile devices.)

    Reply

  21. ‘And I have yet to test a single one where Flash works really well. I’m sorry. They struggle on those Android devices.’”

    Hahaha.. FAIL you idiot CEO! haha

    Reply

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