“This report has been in the works for months,” Sarah Rotman Epps writes for Forrester. “We held off publishing it last week out of respect for Steve Jobs, and we have great admiration for his inventions and influence on our culture.”
MacDailyNews Take: We’re sure Steve can handle whatever idiocy you have to dole out this month, Sarah.
“Amazon will disrupt the tablet market… If Amazon launches a tablet at a sub-$300 price point — assuming it has enough supply to meet demand — we see Amazon selling 3-5 million tablets in Q4 alone,” Epps writes. “Amazon will cause product strategists at Apple to prepare for war. Apple sells software and services, but the lion’s share of Apple’s revenue still comes from hardware, which makes it vulnerable to a company, such as Amazon, that isn’t seeking profit from hardware sales.”
“In a year from now, we could see a range of ‘Amazon tablets’ made by different hardware manufacturers,” Epps predicts. “A year from now, ‘Amazon’ will be synonymous with ‘Android’ on tablets, a strong second to Apple’s iPad.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: On June 17, 2010, Forrester’s genius prognosticator Sarah Rotman Epps estimated that U.S. sales for tablet computers from all manufacturers would total 3.5 million for all of 2010.
Meanwhile, back in reality, during the first quarter of availability alone (ended June 26, 2010) Apple sold every iPad they could make: 3.27 million units. Apple sold a total of 14.79 million iPads in 2010.
Bottom line: Take Sarah Rotman Epps’ predictions with a dump truck full of salt.