“Apple sold more than 70 million iPads last year,” Marcus Wohlsen reports for Wired. “People love them. But they might love them a little too much for Apple’s taste, if new predictions of shrinking growth in the tablet market turn out to be true. Tablets are so good, it seems, that people are keeping the ones they have and not buying as many new ones.”
“New figures released today by market research firm IDC see growth in the tablet market shrinking by nearly one-third in 2014 compared to the previous year, with sales topping out at about 261 million new devices,” Wohlsen reports. “‘Consumers are deciding that their current tablets are good enough for the way they use them,’ says Tom Mainelli, IDC vice president of devices and displays. ‘Few are feeling compelled to upgrade the same way they did in years past.'”
“The forecast did not single out Apple or its iPads as being uniquely affected by the slowdown. The prediction appears to apply to the tablet market as a whole. But the declining eagerness to buy new tablets is particularly bad news for Apple.,” Wohlsen reports. “The glimmer of hope for Apple in IDC’s prognostication is that the trend toward lower-priced tablets appears to be bottoming out. Consumers are moving to higher-end devices that work better and last longer, Mainelli says. If Apple is anything, it’s high-end, and if relatively weak sales of its experiment in a ‘cheap’ iPhone, the 5c, are any sign, it’s high-end devices that people want from Apple. The good news is that if people want a new tablet and they want high-end, Apple is a likely place they’ll turn.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As always, Apple will just have to give us reasons to upgrade. They’re very good at that. As anybody who now owns an iPad Air after owning a previous generation iPad can attest: Apple’s latest iPads provide myriad improvements that are well worthy of triggering upgrade sales.
Furthermore, any company not named Apple would kill for the unit sales that iPhone 5c generates. Apple sells millions upon millions of iPhone 5c units.
And, for the umpteenth time, for the Church of Market Share congregation: Apple does not care about general market share. Apple only cares about the valuable part of the market, where the premium, quality, valuable customers exist. Apple’s target is the premium market and, in every category in which they participate – personal computers, smartphones, tablets, portable media players, electronics retail, digital music sales, set top boxes, etc. – Apple dominates.