“There’s an interesting chart in a report to clients issued early Thursday morning by Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“What caught my eye, however, was what her proprietary research shows about the impact of the iPad and other tablets on the broader gadget market, starting with netbooks. As her chart shows, sales growth of these low-cost, low-powered computing devices peaked last summer at an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “It fell off a cliff in January and shrank again in April — collateral damage, according to Huberty, from the January introduction and April launch of the iPad.”
“Her timing seems a little off,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “Steve Jobs didn’t unveil the iPad until Jan. 27, yet the NPD data she cites is dated Jan. 10.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple “tablet” rumors were off the charts well before Jan. 27.
Elmer-DeWitt continues, “But in support of her theory, she offers a Morgan Stanley/Alphawise survey conducted in March that found that 44% of U.S. consumers who were planning to buy an iPad said that they were buying it instead of a netbook or notebook computer.”
Full article, which also shows that iPod touch might be next in line to be cannibalized, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nearly every netbook that’s replaced means one less Windows sale for Microsoft and one more OS X sale for Apple. Watch out for flying chairs!
• The tablet market has only succeeded as a niche market over the years and it was hoped Apple would dream up some new paradigm to change all that. From what I’ve seen and heard, this won’t be it. – John “Bloated Gasbag” Dvorak’s iPad assessment, MarketWatch, January 29, 2010
• You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that… It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’ – Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman, February 10, 2010
Bill Gates. Ever the visionary.
• The Apple iPad is not going to be the company’s next runaway best seller. – John “B. G.” Dvorak, MarketWatch, February 12, 2010
• The iPad has fewer capabilities than a netbook, in a similar size. Not a good start. – Lee Gomes, Forbes, March 05, 2010
• iPads will top the publicity charts this week when they launch, but netbooks will still top the sales charts, and far outsell iPads into the foreseeable future. The iPad will remain an expensive, niche device compared to all-purpose netbooks. – Preston Gralla, PCWorld, March 30, 2010
Gralla’s may be a record incubation time for a foolish quote. Congrats, Preston! Our Take in response to Gralla was: “Ford’s Model T will top the publicity charts this week when they roll off something Ford calls an ‘assembly line,’ but horse-drawn carriages will still top the sales charts, and far outsell automobiles into the foreseeable future. The Model T will remain an expensive, niche device compared to all-purpose horse-powered vehicles. – HorsecartWorld, September 23, 1908.”
• Anyone who believes this thing is a game changer is a tool. – Paul Thurrott, SuperSite for Windows, April 05, 2010
Leave it to Paulie to immediately break the record for ineptitude.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “JES42” for the heads up.]
@Big Als MBP’s-re: my daughter’s netbook. “She must hate you and the wife”.
OK. You’re right. I’m wrong.
@Contrarian:
I’m not saying I won’t ever buy an iPad at some point. Just saying I can’t justify it right now. The iPhone is beginning to feel a bit small for a lot of the stuff I use it for daily.
Besides “Big Als MBP’s” gonna kick my a$$ if I say I don’t quite like something he loves.
Whatever adult deems the iPad as being “too heavy” had better stop using their computer right now and start going to the gym or at least buy some resistive hand grips to increase their wrists and grip strength. That is so pathetic for a healthy adult to say something like that.
On another note, I want all those iHating pundits that said the iPad would be a failure to bend over and let Steve Jobs give ten whacks with a paddle to their buttocks for being so stupid and narrow-minded.
These are the same pundits that are always calling Apple product users sheep. They should realize that there are so many Apple product loyalists that would buy anything Steve Jobs says is magical and amazing. Just that fact alone would make the iPad successful even if just for a short while. Now, practically anyone that lays their eyes or hands on the iPad start to salivate and start saying they definitely want one of them. Kiss Steve Jobs’ bony buttocks, you narrow-minded, iHating MFs.
Guaranteed seven million iPads will be sold before the end of 2010. Hopefully Apple will be able to keep up with iPad demand.
Go, Apple, go! I’m almost certain Apple’s market value will pass Microsoft’s before the end of this year as Windows 7 licenses start to lose momentum.
Sigh. btaylor was not saying the iPad is heavy. He said he found it heavy. Is it too much to expect people to read in context? Clearly, he was referring to his preference, as in what he likes and expects.
Please. Let the testosterone go.
Oh. And for those people who hate netbooks. I see plenty of people with netbook hackintoshes. I considered getting one a year or so back. The iPhone has filled much of that need, an iPad, i expect, would do so and more.
Like btaylor, I remain hesitant. And skeptical (by nature) of all conclusory claims that the iPad is triumphant and all who do not see it are Luddites. That is intellectual bullying, and all too common these days in all facets of life. Tolerance and understanding are all too rare.
It looks to me like a steady decline that started last August.
Mark and others,
Making a distinction between desktop and portable OS versions is necessary for Windows. We should not, however, carry that assumption over to Mac OS X. Unix based systems are scaleable. It is simply a matter of which parts you include in the kernel, and which you leave out. Unix can be made to run a wrist watch with very little memory, a mainframe that manages an assembly line, or a research interconnected server bank. It’s all a matter of what options you choose when you install the OS. Nothing has to be re-written. It’s like adding options to a car. This makes OS X the key to all of Apple’s strategies. They can build a new device and decide what parts of the OS it needs. This cuts development time and encourages innovation. This is the reason I bought all the Apple stock I could afford back when they announced that they would have a new OS based on Unix, back when it was $7.50 per share.
“”Her timing seems a little off,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “Steve Jobs didn’t unveil the iPad until Jan. 27, yet the NPD data she cites is dated Jan. 10”
Um, no, it’s dated January 2010. Apparently Philip Elmer-DeWitt doesn’t know how to read charts.
Okay, not that I’ve spent almost a week with my 64GB 3G iPad, I can honestly say that if you can’t see how its better in every conceivable way than a netbook, you might be a complete raging fool.
The iPad might be too heavy for you (I find if perfectly acceptable) but it’s lighter than a netbook, at least any netbook I’ve used. If you don’t like the soft keyboard, then you can use a BlueTooth keyboard like the one I am now typing on. It’s sleek and light and even carrying both units around is still lighter than a netbook. Plus, when watching TV shows or listening to music, your BT keyboard becomes your remote for play/pause, skip, volume and brightness. Don’t want to carry both to the coffee shop? Then the soft keyboard will do for entering URLs or the odd email. You do not need a mouse, a power supply, or a big bag to carry it all in.
Now let’s get to functionality. Netbook screens are useless. Once you have a browser taking up 1/3rd of the narrow screen you don’t have much space left to enjoy web pages, and you can’t change orientation. You can suffer with a tiny track pad, or carry around a mounse and have to have a surface to mouse on, which means sitting in a chair with no table is out.
I’m a photographer (http://www.chrissyone.com) and there is no sexier way, on earth, ever, to store, transport, and show off your photos than an iPad. It can be used standing and walking around with ease, unlike putting a netbook or laptop over your forearm and gimping the trackpad with one hand. It can be easily viewed by you and flipped to show others. There are no navigation controls when showing photos. Just swipe, and rotate to show verticals off the way they were meant to be seen. Redraw? Uh… no. They’re all right there. Thousands and thousands of images scroll by with ease, and zoom and swipe beautifully. If the iPad was ONLY my photo portfolio, I’d be happy. But it’s more.
Netbooks run desktop apps. And SO WHAT? There are iPad alternatives to most applications that work better, look better, and do things that desktop apps can’t, like use the accelerometer, GPS, and multitouch. And most of these apps are far less expensive than their desktop counterparts. I can get a productivity suite from Apple for 30 bucks. Now of course, I can’t run Excel macros in Numbers, but I use Excel about 1% of the time and it’s only for work stuff. If I need to make a spreadsheet for my personal business use, Numbers would work just fine. It’s certainly not worth sacrificing all the other advantages just to use Excel for an hour a week.
I will probably never play games on my Mac again, and my toughts of buying a console have now vanished. I don’t know why I need one. Games are absolutely gorgeous on the iPad, and give you a true analog control experience for things like car-racing games (my personal favorite). The iPad offers a unique interaction paradigm that no typewriter-based computer can match. Your mileage may vary… but really, I’ve never seen anyone playing a game on a netbook. Well, aside from Farmville.
Netbooks are officially history. And mark my words – laptops are next. I will certainly never buy one again. I don’t know why I need one. I’ve never liked working in Lightroom on photos on a laptop screen, preferring my large iMac with a second 23″ monitor. I’ll work this way on the desktop for the forseeable future. But the iPad does almost everything else I need to do, and then some. It’s a fantastic ebook reader, it’s quickly replacing my television with great apps like ABC and Netflix, and for a news and photo junkie its a dream sent from heaven with apps like Reuters, BBC, and Guardian Eyewitness.
So let’s review… netbooks are stupid and useless. Laptops are looking like relics from the prop room of a steam punk movie (but way less cool). The iPad beats all of this, if, that is, you’re willing to give up some of your notions of what you think a computer is.
I dare you to try.
-c
@Contrarian
Ah yes, thx.
A voice of reason amidst the Fanboy congregation.
“The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found”
-Miguel de Unamuno
I think we’re finding out who the reasonable adults are here.
@C1
Well, that was a rather aggressive review. And you daring me to try, well, that is just plain…..er….okay, that might work
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But I think I have the power to resist. It certainly wasn’t a triple dog dare.
Hello… is everyone forgetting the dead horse on the dining room table, and the 600 LB. gorilla that put him there?
Netbooks soared last year because you could buy Linux based 9″ netbooks for $179. However Uncle faster (the aforementioned 600lb gorilla) was unhappy, because 1; the small trim netbooks were not capable of running the heavily bloated vista (or win7) OS AND they were selling too cheap to cover the “microsoft tax”
He vowed then to push the price of netbooks up to nearly what laptops cost, AND reverse the then wide availability of linux netbooks.
Well… he succeeded in both, there are almost no pre-configured Linux netbooks available and cost double. Guess what is it any surprise that not only has the growth dropped?
Think netbook sales are down now? Wait till iPad manufacturing ramps and they are available world wide, there won’t just be a decrease in the rate of growth, but a flatline (or even decrease) in units sold.
(PS why is MS allowed to continue to strong arm manufacturers away from linux while the EFF, FSF, FTC, and DOJ stand by mute, while screaming about Apple’s “monopoly on apple products”???)
If there are any reasonable adults here I want them caught and shot right now.
“I triple-dog dare you”
;P
@Contrarian
There are a lot of us older/young at heart people around. I programmed in BASIC on a TRS-80 (as well as an Interact and an Apple II) and the last version of FORTRAN that I used was FORTRAN 77.
Anyone old enough to have used an Apple II or even one of the early Macs is around four decades old (plus or minus). But that makes us a bit more discerning in some respects (or so I like to think). Having used up roughly 50% of our anticipated life span, we are less tolerant of wasting our time and increasing our blood pressure with inferior technical implementations (Windows and Windows-based PCs).
Being older (and still alive) is better than the alternative.
What shot would you give me? Tequila? Gin? Bourbon? Vodka? Sounds like my everyday cocktail hour.
Oh wait, you meant….Exit stage right.
@ KingMel. I remember playing Colossal Cave on a TRS-80. Still fun to think about it.
Otherwise, fair enough. I only use Windows (via VM Fusion) to connect to certain government websites.
“we are less tolerant…”
You don’t say…
It’s not less tolerant–it must be judgment.
“At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.”
Partially agree. But wit is ageless.
Franklin’s quote was about what reigns at a particular age, not what you gain and/or lose each decade. I shudder at the thought that my wit (of whatever amount) will wane very soon.
In Franklin’s case, at any age, he tended to keep the reins in his trousers.
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I bow down to your superior wit.
To those who might like the iPad but want more of a netbook feel (don’t tell ChrissyOne though), perhaps the ClamCase might be an option?
Oh come on, I’m not THAT touchy. ;P
But let me say this – the BlueTooth keyboard is *excellent* and removes one more barred that folks might have. Personally I like to keep them separate so I have the option of using or not using the keyboard.
errrr yawn……zzzzzzzzzzzzz
!!!!say what?
I like chips with OK Sauce.
…….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz