“One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen leveled against the iPad is that it was too expensive compared to other tablets, and that the high price was acting as a barrier to sales,” Adrian Kingsley-Hughes writes for ZDNet. “Turns out that was true.”
“Earlier this year Apple attempted to resuscitate flagging sales by turning to the older-than-dirt sale trick of cutting prices. And it looks like it’s worked. But at a price. Sales are up, for sure,” Kingsley-Hughes writes. “Problem is, increased sales hasn’t done much for revenue or profits. While iPad sales are up 15 percent year-on-year, revenue only climbed by a measly 2 percent.”
“During yesterday’s earnings call… We find that people who buy iPads actually love the iPad – so the trick is getting them to buy them,” Kingsley-Hughes writes. “It seems that people love everything about the iPad – except the price.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Told ya so:
iPads are too expensive relative to the perceived competition and Apple has obviously done a piss-poor job of marketing the iPad family (read: clearly explaining to the hoi polloi why they want an iPad over an Amazon or other Android tablet).
Sticker price is the biggest reason why iPad sales struggle to return to growth (the next biggest reason is that iPads’ useful lives last so damn long, they’re not rapidly replaced).
We would have purchased iPads for family members this year if they had been updated as they should have been for the holiday season and if the prices were a bit more palatable. Yes, we know what an iPad offers. Yes, we know they’re worth the money Apple’s asking for today; even being last year’s models. But, Apple should really do the math and consider making certain hardware more affordable in exchange for the backend revenue and increased mindshare and market share that will deliver.
For the same reason – mindshare – Apple should make their own Apple displays, even to the point of taking a loss of each and every one, so that other companies’ logos on frankly ugly products that do not match Apple design sensibilities are not in users’ faces all day long. That’s not a difficult concept to grasp; even an inveterate beancounter might be able to get it. — MacDailyNews, January 6, 2017
SEE ALSO:
Apple execs: We’re working on new Apple-branded pro displays – April 4, 2017
Apple unveils new 9.7-inch iPad starting at new low price of just $329 – March 21, 2017
Apple Inc. just keeps rolling along to their own product pricing and rollout agenda; why, you may ask? Because, there is ONLY an “iPad Market”, nothing else competes in that market. Everyone else goes to the “Trash Tablet market”, to compete for the crumbs that are left!!
Sorry MDN, those bean counters don’t get much of anything until the business is in the tank and they can’t count many beans any more. Witness the decline of the Mac, and lack of supporting products like monitors and the Airport routers. Pathetic.
I will wager that the next iPad margin numbers will be much improved. The quarter reported included very few new iPad Pro sales. The iPad Pro 10.5, from what I can tell, is selling very well. Though much more expensive than previous iPads, such as the Air 2, it will sell even more. It is not price alone, but price/features that set the value.
I own a Mac Pro Workstation, an iPad Pro w Pencil, a MacBook Pro, a Mac mini, an Apple TV, an Apple Watch, an iPhone and iPod Touch, an AirPort Extreme Base and other Apple stuff (Original Apple TV w HD, for example). If Apple wants me to buy more so they can make more, why not spend a little effort and time improving your offerings.
I would love an iPad mini that was upgraded to current standard displays and CPU- would buy one today if it existed. I would love a Mesh Networked AirPort Extreme if Apple sold one. I would love a real Mac Pro when and if Apple ever decides to make one again. I would love an updated iPod Touch with a better CPU/GPU- the iOS 11 Public Beta drags on the iPod Touch currently being sold. I would love another LED Cinema Display- how about one that is 4K HDR with a built in GPU that can take a pedestrian MacBook or Mac mini and supercharge it into a much more powerful machine. You might even want to build an Apple TV into the Apple Display so that it can be used for Picture in Picture TV along with the Mac Desktop.
Apple was once a smallish company that had to shepherd limited resources. These days they have more money than they know what to do with and have plenty of people. I am sure it does not take everyone to keep the iPhone going, so let’s see a company that broadens it’s product line – especially in hardware.
I see a lot of things going on at Apple these days but not much that could be called Thinking Different. Lots of iteration instead of innovation. Lots of following and not much leading.
I started buying Apple stock in 2000 and stopped somewhere between $300-400 a share on the ride up. I would like a good reason to buy Apple stock again.
I’m in the same boat. Disgusted with the 2013 Mac Pro and Apple’s subsequent acknowledgement of a dead end and form factor most did not want (all they had to do was ask the pros at the time). Likewise on other Macs, monitors, routers, etc.
And disappointed Apple fails to do even basic advertising (let alone of the killer Chiat/Day variety ala “This is Mac, This is PC”) which is clearly just INSANE.
Hate to be a pessimist but the fish rots from the head down.
Good, long reply, Dav. Me too. Excellent you’re richer than me and know more.
Have no idea, but I am an Apple investor and the appreciation of some of the stock bought the car in my driveway.
Most (but not all ) of what you want will be offered soon… they have already been announced. So hang in there ..they coming,
Plus Tim, yesterday at the conference call, hinted at a few potential suprises coming by end of year.. … which i find exciting..
Tim listens way more than Steve did.. im convinced of that !
Well the price was certainly too high while they sat on their asses not really developing the capabilities of the product for some years. This meant that there was no great impetus to upgrade from older models at the high price one was expected to pay. The product is much more capable now (or soon will be) but it will take some time to convince potential buyers that is worth investing in the more expensive models, a decisive shot in the foot there Apple. Now that the product is becoming much more capable I expect gradually the higher cost/capability models will gain more of the iPad market share overall.
However there are still a few barriers to this I think as I found out annoyingly when trying to find a way for my stepson to easily transfer his sports work training videos onto an external device in the field. Yes you can but people want ease of use and when you are simply used to using USB to drag and drop without thinking to say a flash drive, its a bit embarrassing that that isn’t so easy/flexible/cheap with an iPad. I assume with file vault, sorry the file app this will potentially make it a doddle but it should have been available years ago and despite my suggesting solutions to him the negativity has embedded itself and he intends to swap it for a laptop which due to price may now be a pc.
Equally he needed to produce a website for this new business but I discovered that Wix for example don’t support iOS as yet. Its just little frustrations that need work arounds that stop it from being as seamless and a laptop alternative as it needs to become at the price point its at. Though at least the new low end price point more fits its capabilities. This will all be solved but Apple really blew it trying to sell at a high price while making sure it wouldn’t draw sales from Macs, at least when it had started to saturate the market.
I have lot of apple products pretty much everything except Mac Pro. Apple have mastered art of pricing their product low but the transaction price after all stuff you need is very high sometimes 30-40 higher than the price. It is insane to offer 32gb iPad Pro 12.9 with most people paid $100 extra for $64 GB version. Then super inflated price of silicone back cover $80, $100 for
Pencil, $180 for KB. $1299 for mbp with 128gb HD a whooping $300 to go to 256 GB. They are destroying their base who buy their product buy double dipping on price. People who don’t want to buy apple due to price are looking somewhat else but the people who do value it got stung by predatory pricing. When their down time the slide will be swift due to no loyalty from base users. I way very mad paying $300 extra for 128gb ext
Ah yes. Well I almost finished typing a long reply and the mdn app crashed and I lost everything.
I should use my MacBook. It’s just more reliable.
I do for most things. Using the iPad I am always aware of its cut-down OS and its crumby keyboard which requires far too many keystrokes if you have to use symbols like € which require six keystrokes to type and then revert to the regular keyboard.
My Mac never crashes. The iPad falls over all the time, mainly because of poor app design or, on the mdn app, advertisements which make it impossible to enter comments.
Apple are just wrong. The iPad is not a Mac replacement except for the computer illiterate.
“the next biggest reason is that iPads’ useful lives last so damn long…”
correct.
As a Apple share holder, I am most concerned about the revenue Apple didn’t capture by not upgrading its products in a timely manner.
For instance, I have a 2012 MBPro with 16GB of RAM and 750GB SSD., I really wanted to update it to a new model with 32-64GB of RAM, but Apple does not offer that configuration. I have 2 options: Wait for Apple, or buy something else.
Also, I would by a 4k Apple TV the day it became available, but it is not available.
I have abandoned the Mac Mini platform due to slow refreshes.
Apple’s inability to execute product refreshes is beginning to be a real concern. The minimal upgrades they did make to the MBPro have resulted in large sales increases. Doesn’t this provide evidence that more upgrades would produce more revenue/profit/marketshare?
MDN
Now you are resorting to censorship if someone critiques you ? Wow… talking about hypocrisy ..
I wrote earlier..
mdn please give credit where credit is due when you quote someone else’s posts …. rather than make it your own… not cool.
You do that offen… its disrepectful… and its blatent ( as u call Samsung offen ) copying and owning.
My reason for not getting an iPad: Why can’t the iPhone do everything the iPad can? After all, the iPhone is hundreds of dollars more expensive than some iPads, and is plenty powerful enough to run, say, Swift Playgrounds…
Sent from my iPhone
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