“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.
Bring it on Sarah. Whatever. I love my Kindle, but I don’t see anyone at Apple peeing their pants over the release of a color version. Not with the oh-so-empty Android Market (for Tablets)
I have talked with a lot of people who have iPads. None of them speak about price.
I’ve been in Apple Stores and watched people evaluating and buying iPads. None of those people are asking about price.
I think people are buying a tool for its functionality and durability.
$500 versus $400 is NOT the issue with people who buy a device they will use for many years.
My flying saucer that I will release this fall will disrupt all air traffic in the US. Wanna bet?
Hey Ubermac
Can you put me down for one? Kinda totalled mine the other day flying through the eye of Irene. The MiB have got the wreckage…
😉
Amazon and their engineering guys won’t be able to even get close on anything except price which they will undercut ……
They will sell a ton and take some buyers away from Apple but in the overall scheme of things the percent and market share will be akin to Apple’s 1996 market share, under 5% ….
The only buyers they will take away are people who would need buy an iPad anyways because they hate Apple or are cheapos…..
i hope amazon releases a great ‘tablet’. Im all for competition and the custom roms for jailbroken amazon tablets are sure to make the device so much more than whatever it will be at launch.
Oh, man, I think I’ll skip this discussion…
first, sarah has a little bit of bias, as well as bad predictions. the bias and bad predictions go along with her wealth of knowledge about the habits of consumers. why else would she leave such a cushy job as “publishing director” of travel guides. also looks like she had the best education money could buy. learning something or expanding your ability to provide valuable and insightful analysis looks like a little too demanding. forester is paid for their analysis. pay first, analysis second. pretty brochures crummy analysis.
“Sarah joined Forrester in 2004. Prior to her analyst role, Sarah was a researcher and an editor at Forrester, supporting Forrester’s research in the travel, retail, and financial services industries. Before joining Forrester, Sarah was the publishing director at Let’s Go Publications, where she oversaw the publication of the annually updated series of 40 travel guides.
EDUCATION
Sarah graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in visual and environmental studies.”
so, don’t be too hard on her because she doesn’t know what she is writing about. i call it MYNALYSIS-when you don’t know anything, but need a check this month, make it up. this is where her bad predictions come from. i’m sure apple pays exactly zero attention to her. she wrote this fishing for a research product job from amazon. what i like about apple is they don’t let this garbage derail what they are doing just do it and prove them wrong, over and over, and over.
apple is the premier company on earth when it comes to knowing consumer preferences. they don’t need no stinking forester! if bezos thinks posting a bunch of garbage about how their tablet will compete with the apple’s, he is headed in the same direction as the RIM yo-yo’s. this is actually fun to watch.
And what has Amazon designed prior to the Kindle that makes anyone think they can compete with the iPad. HP, Sony, RIM, etc, are hardware manufacturers which have failed miserably in the tablet space. The Kindle is hardly a stroke of masterful engineering but it fills its niche as a simple reader. The tablet market is much more discerning than the e-reader market and Amazon will have to produce a superior product to gain any traction against Apple.
So … other than the Kindle’s reader feature, what else is one going to do with the Kindle? There are tens of thousands of iPad apps (not counting hundreds of thousands of iPhone apps), but very few Android tablet apps. Those with iPhones and iPods can upload their music and photo libraries to the iPad … but not to the Kindle.
The Kindle has a far smaller screen than the iPad.
The author seems to believe that Amazon can sell the Kindle at a discount in order to sell content … yet Apple makes comparable profits from selling the same content. So why does the fact that Amazon *primarily* sells content while Apple *primarily* sells hardware give Amazon an advantage?
If the existence of complementary products is relevant, consider this: Apple sells computers, and the ‘halo effect’ of iPads means that Apple can afford to sell iPads for somewhat less, in order to profit from greater computer sales.
All in all, this article raises more questions than it answers.
This is like those stoopid commercials where the idiot can’t read his iPad in the sunlight. Good luck trying to be productive on your ‘Kindle-tab’.
Amadong is going to succeed. Their strategy is to sell their amadong axxpad for 99 bucks. Once user activated the axxpad, axxpad will be populated with ads and amadong will pay the users with amadong credits, like click 1 ad per amadong credit which equals 1 cents. You can redeem your credit at amadong up to 50% of the value on the item you are purchasing.
Amadong will be able to capture about 2% of the tab market and Jeff will call it a success.
I’d love a mid-size iPad.
Shouldn’t AMZN, with a 91.5 P/E, be worrying about its margins? Introducing a no-margin tablet should have its investors running for the hills.
I found a lot of info about android tabs here http://techworld-today.com/2011/09/cheap-android-tablets-arnova-coming/