“Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs emerged from medical leave to introduce a new version of the iPad, aiming to stay ahead of a stampede of tablet-computer rivals,” Adam Satariano and Cliff Edwards report for Bloomberg.
MacDailyNews Take: The more fake iPads the followers churn out, the more the market is diluted and the quicker confused consumers will flock to Apple.
Satariano and Edwards report, “While the iPad 2 has few features that analysts hadn’t predicted, it puts Apple one generation ahead of competitors… [with] lower prices, a chain of more than 300 stores and a broad array of applications [65,000+ for iPad and counting]. ‘Rivals should be scared,’ said Apple investor Michael Binger, a fund manager at Thrivent Asset Management in Appleton, Wisconsin. ‘Steve Jobs has come up with an iPad that’s the same price, it’s faster, it’s lighter, it has all the apps and ecosystem that go around it.'”
“There are currently 102 tablets from 64 makers either on sale or in development, according to consulting firm PRTM,” Satariano and Edwards report. “‘Everybody else is coming up with release one and they are coming out with release two,’ said Carl Howe, a director at Yankee Group, a research and consulting firm. Apple had little competition when it entered the market, said Howe, noting that the iPad was one of the fastest businesses to ever reach $1 billion in revenue. ‘The challenge is how you follow that up.’”
MacDailyNews Take: Challenge met. Just watch. Also, slight correction – Carl must have been misquoted for he’s almost always right when it comes to Apple – iPad is the fastest business to reach $1 billion in revenue.
Satariano and Edwards report, “Jobs touted Apple’s range of applications as an edge over competitors. The company said its App Store has more than 350,000 programs, with at least 65,000 of them taking full advantage of the iPad’s capabilities. ‘Our competitors were just flummoxed,’ Jobs said.”
“The iPad 2 will account for at least 20 million tablet computer sales in the U.S. this year, or 83 percent of the market, said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Satariano and Edwards report.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple will sell 20 million iPads in well under a year and, in the process, they won’t even break a sweat.
Satariano and Edwards report, “Motorola said this week that sales of the Xoom, available through Verizon Wireless, started ‘relatively well,’ and it plans to introduce tablets with other carriers this year… Samsung said on Jan. 27 that it had shipped 2 million Galaxy Tab devices. RIM, meanwhile, plans to introduce its PlayBook tablet this year, and HP is readying a device that uses software from its acquisition of Palm Inc.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Relatively well.” Smirk. Compared to what? ROKR? Tiny, little, damaged, derivative, dismantled company. Yuck. Now, Samsung “shipped” 2 million fake iPads, they never said they “sold” them. In fact, a Samsung executive made it rather clear at the end of January:
Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out. As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK. – Samsung VP Lee Young-hee
As for RIM: Puleeze. If the company makes it to a buyout, they’ll be ecstatic.
Satariano and Edwards report, “The iPad 2 may top the debut of the first generation, which sold more than 300,000 in its first day and 1 million in its first 28 days, Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co., said in an interview yesterday on Bloomberg West.”
MacDailyNews Take: Brian. Putting in an early entry for the Ridiculous Understatement of the Year Award.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]