Eating Apple iPad’s dust: Tablet market a one-horse race

“Some things never change. In February I said, ‘Apple iPad is the clear winner in the tablet wars… The remaining horses in this race largely appear to be high-risk, high-reward long shots,'” Cindy Johnson writes for The Motley Fool. “A lot has happened in the tablet wars since then, but one thing hasn’t changed: The iPad still rules.”

“Apple said on its July earnings call that it’s selling iPads as fast as it can make them. Retail stores sometimes have trouble keeping them in stock. The company is working to expand its iPad manufacturing capacity,” Johnson writes. In contrast, a recent Wall Street Journal article noted that iPad competitors focus on the number of tablets they’ve shipped but won’t discuss the number that are being sold. The difference is crucial: Some industry watchers say so many iPad wannabes are sitting in ‘the channel’ that price cuts are needed to move them out.”

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Johnson writes, “Why is the iPad leaving other tablets eating its dust? When NVIDIA’s (Nasdaq: NVDA ) CEO said last May that Android tablets weren’t selling well, he explained: ‘It’s a point-of-sales problem. It’s an expertise-at-retail problem. It’s a marketing problem to consumers. It is a price-point problem. And it’s a software richness of content problem.'”

Read more in the full article here.
 

52 Comments

  1. “It’s a point-of-sales problem. It’s an expertise-at-retail problem. It’s a marketing problem to consumers. It is a price-point problem. And it’s a software richness of content problem.” Sounds like one BIG batch o’ problems….

  2. ‘It’s a point-of-sales problem. It’s an expertise-at-retail problem. It’s a marketing problem to consumers. It is a price-point problem. And it’s a software richness of content problem.’”

    In short, an entire eco-system problem. The obvious lack of innovation only compounds the problem.

  3. Apple’s always had to suffer from competitors copying what they do… finally they’ve mastered innovation to the point that the competitors can copy but the copies work like crap… and people aren’t falling for it.

    Except those idiots who use android.

  4. no it’s not Just Content. it’s the Just Works Apple Ecosystem that let’s you seamlessly share/access that content across all your Apple stuff and also your TV, which is just about to get a huge boost with iCloud and iOS 5.

    without a Content Ecosystem, a stand alone tablet is just a gadget. Google’s ecosystem is mainly about communications, which is great for smartphones but not significant for tablets. you don’t buy a tablet to make calls, altho you can, or text, altho you can, or take pix, altho you can do that too. so Android tablets are just gadgets, mainly for techies/gadget lovers that like to mix and match software/services and change them constantly to always have the latest stuff. but they are >10% of the market.

    of course cheap tablets from Asia will flood the market soon – the race to the price bottom has already started. they will take a chunk of the measured market too, just like cheap MP3 players do vs. the iPod (and all of the unmeasured market in the second/third world).

    bottom line, for the foreseeable future the iPad will dominate the market like the iPod has with about 70% of total sales. most of the other 30% – say 25% – will be Android in name, and its fans will brag about that fraction as a significant share of the market. but it will be a fragmented and profitless bunch.

  5. HAHAHA..What a joke? All these clowns think that the Ipad is all there is to play with. Well enjoy your apple toy, because Nvidia is making strides and closing in on the competition day by day, with newer,better and more innovative products which they are releasing week after week. Just watch what happens by the end of Q4 2011, and into 2012…by then you`ll all see what I mean, and then you can all eat your rotten apple….

    1. “NVIDIA is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, which generates interactive graphics on workstations,…” Nvidia is closing in on whom? For and with what?

      1. My point is not about the compatability of NVDA chips, My point is that the authors article is horse squat. The bold heading on the subject line of his article here is pure nonsense, especially as it pertains to Nvidias architectures,offerings,and product releases, the past few months, more recently,and upcoming very soon. Trust me, Nvidia is not eating up anyone`s dust here, and nor is it a one horse race either, as you will all find out forward looking very soon. True apple has a real winner with the ipad,but it is by no means the only one with merit.

        1. Rather than spout a lot of bullshit rhetoric, why not put your money where your obviously copious mouth is and show us exactly what NVIDA products, or any other offerings, are by any measure even within spitting distance of the iPad?

          Jesus, you’re not even a good troll. Better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you’re a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

          =:~)

    2. Apple’s growing economies of scale will prevent the competition from matching the iPad’s quality/price point. As you can see from the Wintel ultrabook vendors complaining about trying to match the MacBook Air’s quality/price point.

      Trying to match the iPad will be much harder since iPad components are spread over the iPhone and iPod Touch products. We’re talking tens of millions of components against each Android vendor putting out possibly less than a million tablets apiece. It’s not a matter of just the ecosystem but pure cost of components. The iPad will probably have better profit margins than the iPod ever had and yet the iPod dominated the mp3 player market and still does. Every consumer that goes into an Apple retail store or visits the Apple website is a potential iPad customer.

      With those sort of odds stacked against Android tablets, it will become harder and harder to gain traction while still going after profits. I’m sure that there’ll be plenty of consumers buying $200 Android tablets, but Apple will be making all the loot and selling the most desired tablet.

      Apple is probably capable of designing better chips than Nvidia for its own personal products and Apple certainly has the loot to whatever is necessary to get the best manufacturing facilities and latest techniques that money can buy. If Apple can hold a gun to Intel’s head as far as getting Intel to change its roadmap, then Apple is basically holding all the chips it it needs to threaten TSMC to meet its A6 demands.

    3. “Newer, better, moew innovative products that they ar releasing every week” !!!! in an altertnate universee? Where are these products? Why haven’t we read about them in the Wall Street Journal? Your nasty insulting attitude negates any reason or fact in your arguments. Grow up!

    4. I applaud your enthusiasm but I think you missed the point of the article. The contention is that the competition is not just about more clock cycles per second or other hardware parameters. When you are talking about selling product world wide at this scale then many factors come into play. You could have the fastest processor and best graphics chips but if people don’t know your product exists, if they don’t know why they need one, if they have no access to a store that sells them and so on then you can’t win in the market place.

  6. Well I can see you are able to cut and paste, but that`s NOT all Nvidia is all about… Maybe you should research them a bit more to really understand what they do….They are closing in on Apple,taking their rightful portion of market share as it pertains to tablets << or did you forget what this dumb article is written about here? This is all just about blowing apples horn,making a lot of noise about old news ..apple `s ipad is already old news, and the silly fool that wrote this article needs to do a little research on what is really going on in the tech industry… You people are so wrapped up in your Apple world that I`m sure nobody here would even dare research Nvidia and see what they are coming out with, a few recent very impressive offerings recently are in direct competition as far as the 10 inch tablet market is concerned. It`s already been mentioned in a number of articles out there that Nvidias usage of 4g in it`s products makes the iPad speed look like dialup ! Too bad the world is all caught up in an apple stupor, especially most people posting here. Well,wake up because the ipad is not all that anymore, it`s just a matter of a little time. Time = the great equalizer.

    1. Oh, 4G networks. Why didn’t you say so. As soon as the next generation, low power 4G chips arrive and the 4G networks are built out, Apple will lead the way.

      No network expansion and no fix to the high battery usage problem and 4G just won’t cut it in North America.

      Apple is a Nvidia customer too, you now know.

    2. You know, you have a lot in common with Montezuma’s Revenge, although you spurt shit out of your mouth. I can’t take anyone seriously who names their self after a critter that licks it’s own asshole. Guess it’s no problem for one as tasteless as you.

    3. Nvidia has iTunes?, an in house OS? or an ecosystem to compete? You see, this is no longer about specs, it’s all about user experience and Nvidia can only hope to be part of the solution. Apple is TODAY the entire solution and it is not sitting still. iOS 5 is just around the corner and every time Apple releases a free upgrade to there mobile OS, it further augments the value of products that people already have in there hands. Nvidia could come to market with the best mobile GPU, it would mean nothing because it is only part of the solution. It still profoundly depends on 3rd parties to implement said technology. On the other hand, Apple owns the whole widget, not just the GPU, or the hardware or the software. It controls the entire experience. Nvidia, Google, HP, Samsung, Microsoft, Motorola, HTC and any other company are only part of the solution. That is why Apple will always be ahead. You can argue what you want about Android, it is not as secure as Apples iOS, it is not as well implemented as iOS, it’s not as stable as iOS. This is no longer a spec per price situation like in the old PC era. This is about price per user experience, and nobody can touch Apple, neither in price or user experience.

    4. You Apple haters are pathetic. You fumble around spewing weak arguments that never have any basis in reality. Your hatred of all things Apple is truly peculiar. Were you beaten with an Apple Cube, perhaps a Newton? No, Apple doesn’t get it right all the time. But, as of late, they’re nailing it where it counts and you just can’t handle the truth. So sad to be you.

        1. Thanks for posting the link. Now we know what you are talking about. Nvidia still does not address the ecosystem issue so the Nvidia product is moot.

          Anybody have an iPad that is too slow or could be faster? Dont think so and if it was an issue there are more solutions than Nvidia products. Your claims are off topic, sir.

        2. You’re basing your entire argument on speed? Wow. You’re dumber than your initial posts made you seem. Clearly, you have no clue about what’s driving iPad sales and why the rest of field is faltering.

        3. Oh I don’t know, some of us ‘losers’ sure are bringing in the bank with just aapl stock. 🙂 You hold tight to that dream, because without dreams we are nothing. 🙂

          Now, move long….. you are starting to bore us.

  7. Its a point-of-sales-problem?
    Android vs App store?Android feels cheap, looks cheap and because its free it I struggle to buy anything from the android market. (Has a Linux feel)
    When u buy something, u place value in it, when you get it for free.. you dont

    1. “When u buy something, u place value in it, when you get it for free.. you don’t”

      ..and this pc students, is successful marketing = sales = profit = market domination, all because of solid engineering, and sound leadership decisions up front, which all of you lack.

      Thanks AdamEllis…I appreciate your set up line.

  8. This isn’t just a problem that the sales associate at Best Buy know smithing about an Android, HP, RIM or other tablet. (Most of them I’ve seen won’t even turn on in the store anyway.) they don’t know anything about iPads either.

    The problem is that people know that these other tablets just suck and have no apps, so no functionality. And you can’t market your way around that b

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