“When Apple announced its most recent quarterly earnings, the worst news out of Cupertino was that sales of iPads weren’t greater than in the year-ago quarter, a fact that a few pundits have now jumped on to declare that ‘Apple’s iPad Businesses Is Collapsing.’ That’s wrong,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for AppleInsider.
“Rather than collapsing, Apple’s iPad business is refusing to collapse, even in the face of broad availability of much cheaper Android devices first launched years ago. Apple isn’t in panic mode or it would be scrambling to introduce cheaper tablets, rather than fancier ones with higher price points supported by demand so great that it increased iPad ASPs over the previous year,” Dilger writes. “It would be hard to imagine a definition for ‘dominating’ a market segment that is more powerful than Apple’s top selling, price insensitive iPad standing on the face of a variety of alternatives that sell for a fraction of the cost.”
“By anyone’s estimates, while Apple’s revenues from tablets came in solidly flat with a minor increase in ASPs, Samsung’s smartphone and tablet ASPs were plummeting along with its revenues, taking down profits along with it. That sounds like the definition of ‘collapse,'” Dilger writes. “The simple fact that Apple sold over $7.5 billion worth of tablets in one of its historically slowest quarters within a ‘tablet market’ where every other vendor has been completely unable to even approach Apple’s tablet volumes at any price — even those like Amazon, Samsung, Google and Microsoft who are willing to lose millions of dollars just to buy fractional increases in market share — should embarrass the pants off of clickbait pundits and market researchers who continue to peddle a ridiculous story that Apple is in some sort of tablet trouble.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple sold 20.486 million personal computing devices (iPad + Mac) in the 91 days that comprised Q214 (December 29, 2013-March 29, 2014). That’s not counting iPhone or iPod touch (which most certainly are personal computers in your pocket) which, on their own, exceeded 45 million units.
Bottom line: In 91 days, representing their historically slowest quarter, Apple sold over 65 million personal computing devices.
“…should embarrass the pants off of clickbait pundits and market researchers who continue to peddle a ridiculous story that Apple is in some sort of tablet trouble.”
Yes it should. But, somehow, it never does. Are they ignorant, stupid or hypocritical — or all three?
Gauging from the fact that these market researchers are for the most part American I’d say all three. If it’s state sponsored government market researchers, add a bonus, ignorant, stupid, hypocritical, manipulators, manipulators, manipulators a la Ballmer, bring on the FUDsters and a nice serving of terrorism for dessert making a delicious all you can eat venue for those who enjoy consuming such brain candy.
add to your already shy list, since many may add below me,,,,
psychopanth… just sayin’
A good point, well made, but the ‘pundits’ and ‘analysts’ only listen to themselves, because they’re the ‘experts’.
Although what makes them experts I’m still none too sure; I’ve yet to see anyone show they’ve qualified from a university with a degree in such things.
On their office walls, they may have a framed Certificate in Yellow Journalism, or an Ass ociate of Arts in Prevarication & Dissimulation
and in thier bathroom, equally qualified paper for important tasks that are not done till the paperwork is completed
Oh what a complex and muddy metaphor, fine one
If Apple is suffering from anything on the iPad front its that the older iPads are great! There’s no need to rush out and buy a new one. I just wiped one and set it up for a friend last night and it’s old enough that it can’t access Siri, but it runs 7.1.1 pretty much just fine. Unless you’re a fanatic, you probably don’t see the need to toss it and get a new one.
If you’re an organization that bought 30,000 of them you probably REALLY don’t see the need to toss them and buy new ones.
Add that to the people waiting for new iPads later this year before buying and there can appear to be a stall.
Also contrary to the ideology of market analysts, everyone in the world does not need a smart phone and a tablet. There are only so many hundreds of millions of people to sell these items to. After that, they get into the area of iPad vs. food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for the kids.
I f***ing love Daniel Eran Dilger’s articles. (Not being sarcastic.) I figured this was one of his just from the headline. I’m glad I wasn’t disappointed.
——RM
Yes, and his personal blog posts were even better. It’s too bad he’s left off them
I think it was you who once asked how DED was biased. I think this come close to recent bias demonstrations. If you factor in his usual great analysis, this one comes up lacking and, to my mind at least, is an example of his bias:
By “gain traction,” Ubrani can’t possibly be referring to the Asus shipments he cited, because they decreased over the year-ago quarter from 2.6 million to 2.5 million, at least in the chart (above) that appeared next to those words in the press release. That’s not “gaining traction,” it’s retracting gains.
The problem with that analysis is that it conveniently ignores the fact that tablet sales were shrinking, and Asus gained a larger share of that shrinking pie (5.0% -> 5.4%) which is a sign of their gaining traction.
Yes, he does exhibit bias and does so almost unreservedly. Seemingly, he cannot resist a turn of phrase to salt wounds otherwise nobly inflicted, or cite a superfluous statistic. Such subjective inclusions damage his analyses and make them unsuitable for mainstream citation. In other words, they make him a fanboy.
His articles still serve as a counterweight, however slight, to the blanketing of the information landscape by locusts, who value nothing beyond their individual nourishment. I’ll take that, and review the academic summary later. If there is a later.
Is “dying more slowly than everyone else” really “gaining traction”?
——RM
Well of corpse it is! 🙂
This article really shows is that IDC and Strategy Analytics are owned by Samsung.
You analysts are idiots, the reason why you aren’t seeing huge increases in sales is because many of us iPad owners are still using iPad 2’s and even original’s (although we are being phased out) and haven’t seen the need to upgrade because we feel that there hasn’t been enough to make us want to shell out the money, The slightly faster processor and retina display and Siri is nice, but not blowing us away to the point we HAVE to have it, so instead of shelling out $600-$800 when we are still happy getting the job done on our iPad 2, we’re getting better satisfaction keeping the money in our pockets.
And being very happy with your excellent iPad 2, which will, let me take a wild guess, lead you to buying another iPad when it is, eventually, time to upgrade.