“Global laptop sales, which had been rising by double-digit rates before the iPad, collapsed; they grew just 1 percent in the first quarter of 2011. The post-PC era began last year, and Taiwan got blindsided,” Bruce Einhorn reports for Businessweek.
“Companies there are only now coming out with tablets of their own. Acer says it will launch several tablets soon, and Asustek has begun accepting orders for its Eee Pad Transformer tablet,” Einhorn reports. “Both contenders are more than a year behind Apple.”
MacDailyNews Take: Truth be told, everyone in the world is more than several years behind Apple. They may never approach the depth and ease-of-use of Apple’s ecosystem.
“Demand for plain-old computers is hardly disappearing. Gartner expects sales to rebound and grow by 10.5 percent this year,” Einhorn reports. “That’s comfort only in the short term, though. The tablet market is growing far faster: Research firm eMarketer estimates tablet sales will climb 178 percent in 2011, and Apple, with its head start, will maintain a 74 percent market share even in the face of increased competition.”
Einhorn reports, “To make up for lost time, Acer and Asustek may fall back on the strategy that worked so well with personal computers: Undermine the competition with lower prices. Yet Apple, never known for inexpensive products, has priced the iPad so aggressively that the tablet has actually become a low-cost option. ‘Apple wants to gain share as quickly as they can so nobody else can come in and make money,’ says Kirk Yang, managing director with Barclays Capital (BCS) in Hong Kong. ‘That’s just killed everybody.’ As the Taiwanese are learning, in the iPad era, the old price-cutting playbook needs an update.”
Read more in the full article here.