MacDailyNews Take: We’ve each gone from carrying a 17-inch MacBook Pro (6.6 lbs. + ) to carrying an iPad 3G and an 11-inch MacBook Air (1.6 lbs. + 2.3 lbs. = 3.9 lbs. total). The bags we use are also much smaller and lighter. (We use Tom Bihn “Co-Pilot” bags or Crumpler “Salary Sacrifice” backpacks to carry our iPad + 11-inch MacBook Air mobile arsenals. Although they do fit in each bag, our iPhone 4’s are almost always in our pockets).
Suciu continues, “Others in the industry believe the expected demise of the laptop may be premature. Instead, the line between laptop, tablet computer and smartphone will likely blur as a variety of new products emerges that will appeal to different types of consumers. ‘There has already been a reset on how people are using the iPad,’ says Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group. ‘Early iPad people thought it was going to be ‘my everything device,’ but since it came out, half the people I know have gone back to notebooks. What is interesting is that they have moved to an Apple notebook not a Windows machine.'”
“The other factor to consider, says Enderle, is that no other product in the category has been as successful as the iPad,” Suciu reports. “He notes that the Samsung Galaxy had good sell to numbers, but not good sell through numbers at retail, and we could see history repeating itself. There is a chance, he says, that the tablet market could wind up like the digital music player market: dominated by Apple. There were of course MP3 and other digital music players before the iPod arrived, but since its release in late 2001, it has dominated the market. Says Enderle, ‘There is a chance the same thing could happen here.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Rob Enderle making sense… Uh oh. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes… The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… Mass hysteria!
Suciu cobtinues, “The Apple iPad factored into Gartner’s PC sales prediction for this year. With just five weeks remaining in 2010, Gartner cut its forecast for PC shipments. Gartner Research Director George Shiffler stressed that forecast reductions actually reflected a general re-thinking of its forecast for mobile PC sales to the U.S. and Western European home markets, based on the impact of the Apple iPads as well as other media tablets including those made by traditional PC vendors.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In Apple’s fiscal 2010 ended September 25, 2010, net sales and unit sales of Apple Macintosh notebook computers (MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air) increased by 18% and 25%, respectively. If iPad is killing laptop sales, it’s only killing the ones that are festooned with Windows stickers. To complete this picture, someone just needs to hand Ballmer a fiddle.