Apple’s iPad will mirror iPod’s market dominance

“Prior to the iPod, Apple was a niche computer company, targeting the high-end graphics design industry, and with barely a slight prayer to achieve 3% market share. Apple sneaked in under the noses of the hardware giants of corporate IT and introduced the little unassuming iPod,” Darcy Travlos writes for Forbes. “Through the universal appeal of music, Apple was able to introduce the world to its intuitive and “delightful” user experience and its elegant tactile hip designs. Once Apple created iTunes and extended the ease of using the device to the ease of buying, organizing and sharing one’s music, Apple dominated the ‘MP3’ player category, and does to this day, nine years after the iTunes came on the scene… Hardware without the associated software and user experience only got [other companies] so far, and that ‘so far’ was sharing the 17% of the market that Apple did not own.”

“In March 2012, Apple introduced the iPad and it became the fastest adopted consumer electronics product in history. Its revenues totaled $12.4B in over its first year on the market, and grew 131% to $28.6B. It took the iPhone 3.5 years to achieve what the iPad did in two,” Travlos writes. “The iPhone has “only” 24% market share. The iPod and the iPad each has over 65% market share. The iPad demand characteristics are far more similar to the iPod and suggest that the iPad, like the iPod, will be able to sustain over two-thirds of its market.”

Unfortunately, Travlos goes on to erroneously claim that “the iPad, like the iPod, is for content consumption,” but there is still some good information in the full article here.

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15 Comments

    1. finally makes sense. ipad mini fills a gap.
      if u want a touch, get an iphone 4, 4s, 5, whatever….

      apple has the killer hat trick in place. old tech gonna get crushed even harder. time for new tech kickstarts to produce some niche hardware.

  1. Uh, don’t they mean introduced in 2010? I know I had one two years ago. And I really don’t buy the idea that 35% of the tablet market isn’t Apple’s. Who else is out there selling any quantity at all? The Fire’s tanked and even galaxy duds are sitting on shelves. They’re counting shipped, not sold, which is idiotic. Just because warehouses are full of the POS doesn’t mean they will end up in consumer’s hands.

  2. How stupid is that… Apples iPad market far exceeds anything Apple has ever offered… it clearly by passed the iPod market in the first quarter it was introduced.

  3. There are those out there that will downplay the importance and influence of the iPad until they die. I wouldn’t bet that there are those out there that insist the Zune was a much better product than the iPod. I think those people are called contrarians.

    I’ve been using and owning Macs since the first Mac 128 was introduced, but I can still acknowledge that Windows OS dominated the computer industry. It’s just a matter of people being able to face reality and plainly some can’t.

    The iPad is positively going to change the whole computer industry no matter how many fools say that it not very useful. From animals, to toddlers, to seniors, nearly anyone can enjoy using an iPad. Why there are so many people that refuse to accept that fact is quite unbelievable.

    I remember one thing when the iPad first came out and there were those saying that no one would look at media on an iPad when they had an HDTV at home, yet it’s the iPad that’s changing the way media is being distributed and is going up heavily against the networks. I’m sure the iPad will be more credited for the way media content is distributed than the mighty HDTV.

  4. Many pundits are expecting kickstand-ready tablet sales to soar since pioneer MS publicly demonstrated the breakthrough technology. It won’t be long before high-end desktops and notebooks feature a kickstand and later filtering down to netbooks and handhelds.

    PC+ = kickstand era

    Only Ballmer.

  5. Most people use iPad for content consumption. That’s the whole brilliant thing about it! Ditches all but the core functions: web, email, music, movies, texting, games.

    As Jobs implied, the iPad is a car, not a truck.

    Content creation is hands down easier and better on a truck. Pit a 27″ iMac against an iPad, who will create a presentation and have it emailed and printed sooner? Why would I author content on an iPad unless forced to? Yowsa.

    Yes there are exceptions, but I’m talking about 90% of iPad users, not the mythical GarageBand gurus or the diehard iPad Pages/Numbers users.

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