“Apple’s release of another new iPad this year has many scratching their heads,” Lance Whitney reports for CNET. “But Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty sees method behind the madness.”
“First, the 3rd-generation iPad, which the analyst calls a ‘stale product,’ could have seen its sales cannibalized by the cheaper iPad Mini,” Whitney reports. “Second, sales for the 3rd-gen iPad were not as high as expected, which Huberty blamed on limited improvements over the iPad 2. Adding the A6 chip to the iPad 4 doubles the new tablet’s performance, which at least ‘partially addresses that issue.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Limited improvements? Anybody who’s even glanced at them, much less owned both the iPad 2 and the iPad with Retina display (3rd gen), understands how stupid that sounds.
Whitney reports, “And finally, Apple may have relied on experience in pushing out a new iPad. The company refreshed the original iPod when it released smaller versions, which the analyst says ‘accelerated growth.'”
More reasons in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
The iPad is an important part of what Apple offers. When we see a speed bump to a MacBook Pro no articles are written asking “why?” It is what it is. Upgrades come along and then another and then another. Apple doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel ever iPad release and they also don’t need to justify an upgrade to a key product in their portfolio.
Apples naming convention at times has severely affected its marketing although it carries on as if it was Steve Balmer with it head buried so deep in the the sand to avoid the blood curdling screams form loyal followers.
This all goes back to the dropping of the G3, G4, G5 naming which follows other marketing genius like the car market, like GTS or SP which denote faster sports, special versions of the normal. There was no G6 and history will show a significant decline in the Mac Pro sales after this time,although this also had to do with the increasing spec of the cheaper iMac. A G6 is now known as small personal jet plane.
The latest iPad 3rd generation called an “iPad” also falls into this category as Apple total confused the public because they did not call it an iPad 3. This illegitimate child that only lacked an updated processor and suffered some heat issues under cpu stress was passed over by many for an older iPad 2. But maybe this was Apple strategy all along as they have chosen a technology so new and hard to make (Retina Display) that they cannot make enough of them to supply demand.