MacDailyNews Take: If you want to buy a consumer-friendly tablet computer today, why the hell wouldn’t you want to purchase Apple’s iPad? What, did you hit your head or something?
Sutter continues, “The iPad currently has no real competitors, and the touch-screen computer is so far ahead of the market that it has some gadget makers running back to the drawing boards, according to technology industry analysts. ‘In essence, what Apple has done is created a wake-up call to the rest of the industry — that they need to look at what they’re offering,’ said David Daoud, research director for the firm IDC. ‘They raised the bar significantly.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple. The alarm clock of the clueless.
Sutter continues, “Tech analysts still expect as many as two dozen different tablet computers to go on sale before the end of the year. But they say it’s questionable whether any of the devices will be able to replicate the iPad experience, which includes not only hardware but also a phone-like operating system, a touch-screen interface and a robust app store.”
MacDailyNews Take: “A phone-like operating system.” Yet another paradigm defined for the world by Apple. (Yes, despite its now-outmoded name, Apple’s iPhone OS (OS X) is much more than a “phone-like” OS. It really does need a new name, Apple.)
Sutter continues, “Meanwhile, it appears that some of the most-talked-about iPad competitors may be getting retooled to better compete with Apple’s high-profile gadget. The HP Slate and the Microsoft Courier — two prototypes of iPad-like devices — were both expected to go on sale later this year.”
MacDailyNews Take: Exactly who expected that and do they have any cash? We ask because we’ve just taken ownership of a very nice bridge in Brooklyn and…
Sutter continues, “Apple’s success is ‘causing a lot of tablet entrants to rethink what they’re bringing to market and how it’s being used by consumers,’ said Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner Inc.”
MacDailyNews Take: What else is new? Steve Jobs defined the personal computer (three times so far, maybe four: Apple II, Mac, Mac OS X, and perhaps iPad) — the portable media player and online media store (iPod and iTunes), the so-called “smartphone” (iPhone), the Multi-Touch™ user interface (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), and the tablet (iPad).
Sutter continues, “Baker’s company predicted that, of the 10.5 million tablet computers he expects to be sold this year, the majority will be from Apple. On Monday, Apple announced it had sold 1 million iPads in the 28 days since the gadget went on sale.”
MacDailyNews Take: Another analyst who’s forgotten to factor in Christmas and Apple’s imminent international iPad rollout.
Sutter continues, “Other tablet makers will have to get in the game soon to have any chance of competing with the Cupertino, California, company, which also makes the popular iPhone and iPod, said Ashok Kumar, senior technology analyst at the investment group Rodman & Renshaw. ‘You need to have a product on the shelf by fall to make the holiday deadline,’ he said. ‘If you miss that window of opportunity, you essentially give Apple an insurmountable lead.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Surely Eric T. Mole can have his boys, along with HTC or some other collection of too many cooks, shit something out by Christmas for the morbidly befuddled market, right? Barring patent infringement injunctions, of course.
Sutter continues, “Leslie Fiering, a researcher at Gartner, said as many as two dozen consumer-friendly tablet computers — also sometimes called slate computers — will debut by the end of the year. It’s unclear who the main competitors will be, she said, but it may take more than a year for other companies to create a product “ecosystem” that is as useful as Apple’s.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, it’ll probably take more than a “year.” (Hoots of laughter ring throughout the cavernous hall of the palatial MacDailyNews HQ.)
Sutter continues, “Daoud, from IDC, said he doesn’t expect any iPad alternatives this year, in part because the iPad has been so successful. He expects Apple to come out with a new version of the iPad before another tech company takes its first swipe at the idea.”
MacDailyNews Take: Sing it, Roy!
Sutter continues, “It’s unclear exactly what the leading rivals to the iPad will look like, and who will make them, the analysts said. But one thing is clear: They will have some catching up to do.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “silverwarloc” for the heads up.]
Awesome…I made the “heads up” list. Thanks, MDN.
“Tech analysts still expect as many as two dozen different tablet computers to go on sale before the end of the year.”
Two Dozen?!?! Do they have any clue where they’re going to find 24 tablet manufacturers? I don’t think I can name that many vaporware manufacturers, let alone hardware manufacturers.
Dell
HP
Lenovo
HTC
Microsoft
Samsung
LG
um…
Toshiba
Google
Motorola
Nokia?
Sony
Psystar…
Linux (yeah, I’m really stretching now)
Cisco
Sun
Where the heck are they getting two dozen from?
Have you seen where M$ and HP have already junked their tablet mock-ups, eh?
Catching up indeed… I would suggest the lead is already insurmountable for at least 5 years. iTunes is how old? And is only recently mature enough to handle the load of making all things multimedia and print available to all.
What’s even more amazing is the fact that the integration of the technology that goes into the iPhone,iTouch, and now Ipad is not revolutionary. No one will be able to match Apple’s computer interface. The iPhone has no match after how many years!
Gotta love the anti-Apple whining in the comments section of this article on CNN! The anti-Apple crowd are simply miserable!
Apple, Inc. = Leadership + Innovation + Think Better + Built wayBetter
The rest are looking from behind the 8 ball or getting crushed.
Apple 1% increment on market share is fine.
Imagine that, a company raised on the principles of doing work for the passion of it, of making your work your art, is kicking the living shit out of companies that are raised in Harvard business school, etc. What’s their strategy? How do we make the most money from the givin circumstances. And they are good at it. The USA is getting shit on at this very moment. But I digress. I just think it’s hilariously beautiful that a crazy lsd tripping liberal Steve Jobs is kicking the SHIT out of those guys.
I ABSOULUTLY LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!
Never in my WILDEST dreams did I think Apple was going to stick it to the competition this badly.
It’s the Greatest Story Ever Told.
Keep up the Grateful work boys and girls the best has yet to come.
Peace.
HMCIV – number of different tablets, not necessarily different manufacturers.
Why are these competitors only now running back to the drawing boards? The iPhone OS has been around for three years.
Speaking of misnomers, iTunes urgently needs a name change to iMedia.
The way I see it, Apple will have a lock on the tablet market for quite a while. Even though the competition has had years to copy the iPod Touch, none did. Now that the iPad is out, we hear that both HP & M$ have killed their current tablets due to the obvious inferiority of their product.
Whomever may come out with an Android tablet, it won’t have the elegance of an iPad because the PC crowd hasn’t figured out that this is a new market for consumer appliances, not a netbook replacement. They will make it thick, heavy and clunky as they don’t get the fact the iPad is a Kindle killer, not a laptop replacement.
Like the iPhone, this product is a game changer and it will take a year or two for the competition to catch up. While they may add extra features with the benefit of being able to build on the iPad model, by that point iPad v2 or v3 will be out and Apple will still own the market.
Bottom line: There’s no better time to buy an iPad as the prices won’t be coming down anytime soon as there is no competition and the demand will only get stronger. The new iPod Touches may give some insight as to what v2 may look like, but Apple probably won’t put all the iPhone/Touch features on the iPad for at least 2 years in order to differentiate.
I think HP Slate + Palm Web OS would be a good combination.
A third leg “à la” iTunes would still miss to the equation though.
@ HMCIV
You forgot:
Tinker toys
Mattel
Fisher-Price
HMCIV,
Dell will bring out two dozen.
13 of which will be crap.
It’s entertaining to watch all the “gadget makers running back to the drawing boards” coming out with their me too products. The humorous part is that they don’t get the fact they do not have a salad bar, i.e. iTunes/App Store and cohesiveness with iPhone/iPod. They’ve got a little lettuce and maybe some beets but they’re missing the rest of the ingredients.
It’s not just the device’s specifications and capabilities–get a clue.
MW: consider, as in it’s time for them to REconsider their approach.
The thing is, Apple planned iTunes to be the software delivery system for all of their consumer hardware products *years* ago, before the first iPod was ever released. Apple has (at least) a 20 year product roadmap and will keep zigging & zagging to the point that no other CE company will be able to keep up.
This is why every other CE company in existence gets blindsided by Apple: they keep looking at where Apple is (at the moment) and try to release a ‘me-too’ product (which takes years for them to ‘perfect’) so they don’t get left behind. Meanwhile, Apple is moving on to something else while simultaneously continuing to improve their existing product line.
Ever since 1976, Apple has made its own hardware & software. When SJ got booted out of Apple, he later started NeXT, for which Apple paid US$400 million for them (unbeknownst to Amelio) to come in and take over.
No other company in the world is as adept at making useful, consumer-friendly software as Apple. This is their ‘secret sauce’: vertical integration of *excellent* (aka: ‘best in class’) software & hardware. Steve Jobs absolutely refuses to have it any other way. Period.
My point is that it’s already over for the other CE companies. They will never be able to get ahead of Apple because they don’t know where Apple’s going… and Apple will never tell.
Sing it, Roy!
Only works in America? Pity.
At first I thought you had written:
Dell will bring out one dozen.
13 of which will be crap.
lol
G Spank, I agree. I will go with the 2 guys in a garage over a “Harvard business school” graduate any day. You think Steve Jobs could stop by Washington DC some day and fix that mess too?
@ Mac+
“I think HP Slate + Palm Web OS would be a good combination.
A third leg “à la” iTunes would still miss to the equation though.”
HP+Palm a good combination??? in 2001 maybe, but now? For what? Fertilizer? Landfill?
You ARE right about the third leg – iTunes – missing, but unfortunately, so are legs one and two.
This is not really analysis at all. Of course, every ox assembler is scared of Apple and the iPad. Objectively, Apple has made everyone wake up and see that mobile computing is the future. And, a new market for smart phones and tablet computers is an area where companies can make huge profits. Everyone wants a taste. And well they should–competition is the only way for technological innovation to occur.
But. Apple so far is the only company to focus on user experience as the way to drive their products. Consistently, most other hardware makers focus on basics and go for the low-hanging fruit.
I do expect more competition–first at the low level, and then higher. It’s all good (says the man with no iPad).
“Will anyone be able to compete with Apple’s revolutionary iPad?”
Yes. The Panasonic 2.45 GHz can kick its ass…..
Copycat Android will make a feeble attempt, it it survives Apple’s lawsuits.
@HMCIV
Not two dozen manufacturers, two dozen models.
Aren’t we all just looking forward to the Home Edition, the Student Edition, the Home & Student Edition, the Office Edition, the Office Professional Edition, the DroidPad. . . you get the picture.
@HMCIV
Darn, Pierre beat me to the punch. Let’s see, the Dell Tablet CX200LS201-AV, the Dell Tablet CX120SS104-HD, the…you get the picture. A dozen variations on an inherently flawed design.
No one wants to have their a$$ handed to them. W7’s touch UI must really be lacking. Why else would HP do all that R&D;just to turn around and drop $1.2 billion into Palm and cancel the Slate.
@ Dirty Pierre le Punk
I suspect that Dell will come out with two dozen wanna-be iPads and 25 of them will be crap.
Not that I don’t like Dell – their computer make good boat anchors.
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As for the rest, no hope. Not all of them combined have the lucid creative genius that Apple has. Period!
@ HMCIV
Two dozen?
Computers, not manufacturers. And considering the manufacturers in countries that we don’t really hear about, 24 may be low.
Does the iPad have competition? Now?
Absolutely. It’s called Ignorance And there is a lot of it.
The others can’t match the Mac (iMac, MacBook, etc) the iPod, iPhone and now iPad. Love it!
They are still working on the iPhone and now they have to focus on the iPad.
I’m sure this is why HP bought Palm. The “it’s just a big iPod touch” turns out to be the biggest problem for competitors. If Apple did what they were “supposed” to do, and make a MacBook with only a screen then they were prepared for that, and have been trying at that for years, and could at least pretend to do a me too product but add bigger hard drive, camera, higher res screen… Because they all still live in a world where consumers use specs to understand value. But this?! More iPhone OS?! Make the bad man stop!!
It’s been a big masterful halo effect pathway….. Give the PC users an iPod, now iPhone, then iPad, and eventually that leap to using a Mac computer isn’t such a leap after all.
It’s the app store/multi-touch os/ hardware integration that they can’t compete with….. And those that learned from their iPod killer making experience will now scrap their tablets, buy a multi touch OS and try to copy Apple from that end, and then put a bigger screen or some other BS to try and get in on some of that.
@TT,
please… back away from the crack-pipe.
Eric here said something that made massive amount of sense:
…”they all still live in a world where consumers use specs to understand value.
In other words, it was easy for HP, Dell, etc. to sell more laptops than Apple, because all they needed to do was to say “MHz for MHZ, GB for GB, dollar for dollar, we are better value”. Consumers don’t know the value of OS X, so they bought cheaper computers with more RAM and HD space.
How do you compare your device with the iPad??? There aren’t MHz numbers on the iPad! We can’t find out what is the size of RAM! All we know is the available storage (32GB, 64GB). So, for consumers, the ONLY way to compare, besides the storage, and possibly screen size, is how it actually works!
Rather than writing an entire article to answer the question from the title, the author could have simply said: “No.”
“Baker’s company predicted that, of the 10.5 million tablet computers he expects to be sold this year, …”
sounds reasonable:
Apple sells 14 million, the rest of the industry buys 3.5 million, so altogether the industry sells 10.5 million.
Crack pipe?
You mean my blow torch and beacon-bulb?
I ain’t no amature…..
@HMCIV, “Tech analysts still expect as many as two dozen different tablet computers to go on sale before the end of the year.”
Radio shack.
Vons.
Tandy.
It’s Amechure, not amature. You stupit ideot!
The game already is OVER. Innovation of this magnitude combined with strict patent protection steamrolls the “competition”.
Apple is using a strategy which prevents “competitors” from introducing a “competing” product, which no one can, after Apple has introduced its product. There are no competitors to Apple.
ABSOLUTELY brilliant strategy, and even more brilliant products by Apple.
Students will be studying Apple’s business strategies 5 years from now.
“It’s Amechure, not amature. You stupit ideot!”
actually, I meant to write “immature”
so, as my ex used to say, the joke is on me.
-wait….
There was only once chance for everyone else – and that depended on the iPad being a flop. Now that it is clear that the iPad is a huge success, everyone else is effectively dealt out of the game.
iPod – everyone else is out of the game
iPhone – everyone else is out of the game
iPad – everyone else is out of the game
What’s next Mr Jobs?
What the competition should do instead of launching into the usual “copy Apple and fail” mode is try to innovate and come up with something different and compelling in its own right. Wouldn’t that be refreshing?
The opening statement implies it is reasonable and acceptable to hate Apple and not buy their products. I’m not sure what the underlying assumption is. Are Apple products are so superior, and their leadership so competent they make some people feel small? Or that Apple products, in being so stylish, beautiful, functional, enjoyable, and popular make them elitist? Wouldn’t you want elite? Does mediocrity feel more comfortable? Do some people feel microsoft, dell, et al, are “us,” and Apple is “them?” I don’t get it, never have.
“What’s next Mr Jobs?”
“Return of Beneath the Planet of the AppleTV IV”
Coming to a widescreen near me…..
The game is never really over, that, ironically is the fact that apple gets. No company has a patent on innovation and every company can be overcome by someone. The only company that could have done this easily was Google but they rushed to market and took shortcuts and basically set fire to the good name that they had. Someone will overtake apple but it won’t be the person who rushes out a spec sheet device but the person who sits down and thinks about what could work (although it is unlikely to happen this decade)
Imagine that you want to develop an application for a tablet computer.
What else are you going to develop for? Android? You have no idea what size the screen will be, or whether there’s a market for you out there.
Judging by the miserable experience that is running most iPhone apps on the iPad, an Android tablet isn’t going to be much fun without tablet-specific apps.
And, I’m guessing, there aren’t many, and won’t be for a while.
Hey, 4654864631312
I’ve got your number….
@John
“Students will be studying Apple’s business strategies 5 years from now.”
the matter of fact is that Apple is bringing to the table the old communist way of planning 10-20 years ahead. This is a wake up call to all the boys in charge and not a pleasant one..
It’s funny watching all these other manufacturers hurriedly skating to where the puck was….
And Apple still has this billion dollar server farm they’ve yet rolled out and they still have the next gen iPhone they’ve yet rolled out and they’re just starting to beef up the eco system they already have to fully embrace all their “toys” so that the USER can gain maximum benefit from them.
Meanwhile Apple’s competitors, having brilliantly, again, skated to where the puck was are standing there asking themselves “How do we imitate Apple so we can increase our profits and take the maximum amount of money from people?”.
Apple, always on the move, is already moving towards the next contact point with the puck; preparing itself to take another goal shot… and the crowds of consumers are waiting, watching… cash in hand… ready to GIVE Apple record amounts of money in appreciation of Apple’s efforts to give THEM the best time they’ve ever had. A splendid time is guaranteed for all!
One other factor that has to be a huge consideration for any tablet manufacturer:
Apple will sue you if you violate their iPhone OS IP. Just ask HTC.
That factor alone will delay any competitor by 6 months at least beyond a normal “hurry up and copy Apple” product development cycle. Add in that Windows 7 will run like a 30 year old dog on any tablet processor and give you about an hour of battery life, and you have huge problems.
@doc e
A splendid time is guaranteed for all!
The sensation of something new, wonderful, and different produces an unusual little thrill through the nervous system, an experience of delight.
In contrast to a bland landscape of limited possibilities that deadens the soul, and cries out for imagination and leadership
I have a great idea: All the Apple bashers should get together with all the Sarah Palin supporters. Since they are both equally stupid and lacking in discrimination, they should get on famously!
This is great. Apple comes to market with the iPad, before even unveiling it, HP, Microsoft think they can quickly maneuver them selves in to a competitive position. Once the gadget gets finally revealed if forces everybody to go back to the photo copiers and attempt to design something that remotely resembles Apple’s offering.
It happened with the iPod
It happened with the iPhone
and it will happen with the iPad
We will see killer this and killer that, but they will only be able to imitate what Apple had two years ago.
Note: The “where the puck (is, was, will be)” analogies are really really really old and no longer clever.
Alansky, really? Why in the world would you take what was a civil discussion om computing and turn it to political bashing? You added no value to anything. Thanks for your uselessness.
Alansky
what does that have to do with the great discussion going on?
“Comment from: Mac Daddy
Note: The “where the puck (is, was, will be)” analogies are really really really old and no longer clever.”
Note: It wasn’t intended to be clever; it was intended to illustrate a point. Hockey is a fast moving game that in order to win requires agile players who can look ahead and be in position to take a shot at the goal when that moment arrives. You succeed by keeping focused on the direction the puck is going and moving yourself into position.
Winning in the extremely competitive marketplace Apple and their competitors are in is dynamically the same game as hockey. The analogy illustrates that dynamic. A lot of things are old; a lot of things aren’t clever including your comment. So what?
@Alansky: Your comment and the very fact you made such a childish comment seriously damaged your status; not Sarah Palin’s. And in the future PLEASE resist the temptation to drool politics and such uselessness onto this forum?
Apple’s Newton Tablet was the first PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) – an ingenious term coined by a soda salesman at Apple in 1992. Though the Newton was somewhat of a flop, the value of the Newton patents will become obvious. There had never been a commercially released PDA in this form factor with no buttons or keyboard where you interact directly with the display screen to manage your personal information, email, schedule, etc. Apple clearly owns this form factor – both the iPhone and the iPad, but in the iPad, without the cellphone in the mix, Apple clearly holds the trump card against all the tablet PDA copycats.
“Comment from: Ringgo
@doc e
A splendid time is guaranteed for all!
The sensation of something new, wonderful, and different produces an unusual little thrill through the nervous system, an experience of delight.
In contrast to a bland landscape of limited possibilities that deadens the soul, and cries out for imagination and leadership”
SO true. And the sensation of having something actually work the way it’s supposed to instead of turning out to be craptastic is also a thrill and delight.
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God could compete but He’s on sabbatical in Fiji.
I have the a “patent on innovation” and I’m going to sue your ass off, except Microsoft, no innovation there.
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Hey Moran, Is that youf Head Up Your Ass!
Does anyone know about availability of 3G iPad in NYC?
MacDailyNews, you rock. This is a wickedly succinct summary of Apple / Steve Job’s achievements in the digital arena:
“Steve Jobs defined the personal computer (three times so far, maybe four: Apple II, Mac, Mac OS X, and perhaps iPad) — the portable media player and online media store (iPod and iTunes), the so-called “smartphone” (iPhone), the Multi-Touch™ user interface (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), and the tablet (iPad).”
What I find amazing is the amount of vitriol spewed by the anti-Apple crowd on these news sites. If a company comes out with a product I don’t want, I don’t buy it. I don’t go online an say how useless it is (based on my limited understanding of said product). I mean if Kawasaki came out with some new motorbike, I don’t hop online and say asinine things like, “well this only has 2 seats – what if I wanted to take two friends on a trip with me?” or “there’s no space for my luggage” or “if it rains I’d get wet” or “my Ford Pinto can get me from A-B, that’s all I need” or . . . well, you get the point.
So what this article is basically saying, and MDN is agreeing to, is that apple has a monopoly when it comes to tablet computing…
There are NOT going to be “two dozen” tablets going on sale during the rest of 2010. It’s possible that about one dozen were planned (hastily due to the imminent release of iPad), but two projects have been cancelled. Most of the rest will be cancelled, because the plan was to use Windows 7 on those tablets. Now that iPad is out there, any tablet computer that attempts to use Windows 7 will be embarrassing, so the makers will just cancel those projects at this point and try again.
Tablets based on Android and WebOS will take time to develop, because those are really mobile phone systems and need to be up-scaled. iPhone OS is Mac OS X downscaled, and Apple has been refining the version used in iPad for years, with an even better version due in the next few months.
> It’s unclear exactly what the leading rivals to the iPad will look like, and who will make them, the analysts said. But one thing is clear: They will have some catching up to do.
He certainly got that part right. I think Apple will have at least two years of undisputed dominance before anything close to a worthy rival arrives.
The iPad is here, now, without Flash.
The competition will kill the iPad “Real Soon Now”. They are just waiting for Flash.
Let me know how that turns out.
Everybody repeat the “MDN Magic Word”: right
The problem, IMO, is that the wannabes are just that…wannabees. Simply emulating the iPad with an extra port or Flash or an OS from a failed phone company won’t do the trick.
Apple has a successful tablet because they DIDN’T copy what was out there. The rethought the market and presented what they thought would sell to consumers. The wannabes figure they can simply copy the iPad concept and succeed. They won’t. They need to do the same thing Apple did: rethink the concept and provide something consumers want.
Good luck on that.
Apple. The alarm clock of the clueless.
BTW Apple have evolved up to this point… remember the old mammal v dinosuar……
Actually, everyone here has it all wrong. Mr. S. Jobs has not done much of anything, it’s all Algore. Bwahahahahahahahah.
STEVE JOBS 4 President !
How can they catch Apple? It’s already heading to where the puck is going to be (eg Siri).
MS,HP and everyone else have even got to where the puck was.