“In connection with establishing iPad sales, margin, and average selling price (ASP) expectations for 2015, I complied a few observations, including thoughts on the iPad mini, upgrade cycles, and the iPad’s placement within the Apple ecosystem,” Neil Cybart writes for Above Avalon.
“I’m increasingly becoming confident in my theory that the iPad mini was a product released with a mission: serve as a hedge against low-end Android tablets in the beginning years of the tablet market,” Cybart writes. “I continue to think we are in a period where the iPad is finding its niche markets, as well as its place within Apple’s ecosystem. Recently, iPad has been included in Apple marketing campaigns like ‘Start Something New’ alongside the iPhone and Mac, suggesting that management may have recalibrate iPad expectations over recent months and now position iPad as being able to fill certain demand holes that the iPhone and Mac are not able to fill on their own, such as an inexpensive video player and email machine (iPad mini) to high-end mac-like devices for creation (iPad Air and eventually iPad Pro). No longer is the iPad destined to the space between the iPhone and Mac.”
Cybart writes, “I estimate Apple sold 19.5M iPads for the three months ending December 2014 (FY1Q15), down 25% from 2014.”
Much more in the full article here.