“Right after Apple’s most recent earnings call, where they discussed huge revenue growth and demand for the iPhone and iPad, I started getting some calls from various vendors who were stunned by Apple’s numbers,” Tim Bajarin writes for PC Magazine. “They were especially impressed, as well as concerned, by Apple’s COO Tim Cook’s statement that Apple had the ‘mother of all backlogs’ when it came to meeting the demand for iPad 2.”
“Of course, the tablet market is hot right now, and Apple’s lead is quite troubling for the competitors,” Bajarin reports. “Many have told me that they fear Apple could ‘iPod’ the market, meaning that Apple could end up being the dominant player in tablets, as it has been in mobile MP3 players. And these concerned vendors often ask what it will take to challenge Apple and keep Apple from dominating the majority of the tablet market in the future.”
“In a recent column ‘How Apple Outsmarts its Competitors,’ I pointed out that while Apple’s competitors can match it feature-for-feature at the hardware level, Apple’s real magic is in the software and services it ties to its devices. But its advantage actually goes even deeper. Apple controls the hardware, software, services and ecosystem that it ultimately delivers to its customers,” Bajarin writes. “The vendors don’t like to hear this, but I tell them that owning the hardware, software, and services is key to competing against Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
The competitors would be better off making cases and other add-ons for the iPads.