“Technology companies who hoped to outdo the Apple iPad by offering alternate slate-like products are not seeing the demand they hoped for from consumers, according to an analyst’s report issued by JPMorgan Chase,” Nick Bilton reports for The New York Times.
MacDailyNews Take: Unless they’re delusional, no tech company hopes to “outdo” iPad. They merely want to vacuum up Apple’s table scraps, which means taking advantage of less-knowledgable consumers who can’t tell the difference between the real thing and an inferior knockoff.
“The report, which was issued on Wednesday, said companies building products to compete with the iPad have slowed production by as much as 10 percent since this time last March,” Bilton reports. “The report named the list of iPad rivals that have failed to gain traction, including Asustek’s Eee Pad Transformer, Motorola’s Xoom, Research In Motion’s PlayBook, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.”
Bilton reports, “Analysts have noted that it won’t be easy for competitors to catch up to the iPad, especially because of the head start Apple has in its App Store, which has become a cornerstone of its success. The author of the report, Mark Moskowitz, has warned in the past of a possible tablet bubble burst, suggesting that a slew of iPad competitors could flood the market and sit there, not tempting customers and leaving a huge oversupply of products.”
Read more in the full article here.
Take Edit:
Unless they’re delusional (like HP, RIM, Toshiba, & Samsung), no tech company hopes to “outdo” iPad.
For other companies truly to succeed, they have to offer a product significantly better than the iPad but because Apple have such audacious design and engineering chops, this is incredibly hard to achieve.
Back in 1996, Byte magazine commented that “…indeed it would not be an exaggeration to say that the history of the entire computer industry for the last ten years had been a massive struggle just to keep up with Apple.” True then, just as true today.
=:~)
It’s the iPod all over again.
Impossible without SETI.
Where Apple skates to where the puck is going to be these doofuses are running on the spot with skates on trying to play catch up.
The only market they’ll capture will be to suction up the bottom end creating little to no margin. The only other doofus stupid enough to make a loss on every sale is Google. Combine two doofuses together what you’re going to get isn’t going to be a genius.
Combine two doofuses together what you’re going to get isn’t going to be a genius.
You will get Doofi.
One could argue that dufus is (quite) irregular, and has the plural dufora. 😆
I’ve been called a doofus and I know that I’m quite irregular.
PS: Doofus is from the German word Doof, meaning stupid. In German, Laurel & Hardy are known as Dick & Doof (fat & stupid).
PPS: Doof is food spelled backwards. Toot is Otto spelled inside out.
“Lookee, Bubba Balmer, the puck has move-ed agin. How does it keep doin’ dat?”
HP has a chance. They really need a change of vision at the highest level to get out of their current business plan. Make as many different units as possible with little synergy. They won’t have an iTunes but web os is not that bad folks. Don’t get me wrong iOS devices are still number 1 to me. Just saying web os has a bigger backer with HP than palm alone. It’ll be interesting in the next 2 years. But who knows iOS 5 might set everyone else back again.
That’s Horace Dediu at asymco.com’s thesis: Companies that are integrated, that make all the components of the system themselves, have the greatest chance of success. Those who just assemble components and use off the shelf software, not so much.
The latter groups is the Windows and Android using companies. The former is Apple, HP, and RIM.
Of course, competent management is still required.
Are these fake iPad makers blind?!
Well, you know what happens when you knockoff too many times!
What these companies do is not offer “alternate slate-like products,” but products that either mimic the look of the iPad or try to beat the technical specs of the iPad. But the iPad is a complete system. Hardware, software, developers, buying and selling
See, @Hp…? The key ingredient missing from the HP OS is integration of the entire system. It doesn’t matter if HP is bigger than Palm was. It matters that the user can’t easily purchase and manage the music, apps, and data that are on their tablets. They’ll sell some, but they won’t keep up with Apple.
Nick Bilton needs to get with the program…. No DUHHHH ! This is old news.
Bilton is just reporting what JP Morgan had in their report. He doesn’t make the news, he just reports it.
Now JP Morgan – lets just say that bankers are not noted for original thinking.
The “tablet bubble burst” started last year, when the first round of non-iPad tablets was released. Each new round of tablet hopefuls just inflates it more.
iPad rules!
The problem with the anal—yst is that they are comparing iPad to ALL OTHERS. The others are not from a single company so its not really an honest or accurate compare.
Its just something that collects hits…. and these guys mostly go by hits vs accuracy.
People keep forgetting about business… Profit.
There is a break even point in manufacture where you pay off all the bills and start to make actual profit. Each of these 20 tablet makers are only selling 1/20 of this fake market share…
If they do not sell enough, they make no profit… $$$$$$$
You have to actually make money to stay in business.
Just a thought,
en
The big hit iPad will take, will happen when the hoards of unsold iPad want-a-bes hit the market at a $200 loss to the manufacturers.
I can see iPad numbers dropping below 80% for a couple of months during the fire sale of unwanted slates.