“After a record 26 million iPads sold at the beginning of 2014, the next three quarters saw sales drop. To be sure, Apple is still selling a ton of iPads—about 68 million in its last fiscal year,” Marcus Wohlsen writes for Wired. “The issue isn’t people don’t want iPads. It’s just that people don’t want them in increasing numbers anymore. ”
“And the reason isn’t hard to figure out. It’s basically what WIRED readers pointed out way back in 2010,” Wohlsen writes. “Smartphones and laptops pretty much already do all the stuff you would use an iPad for. Except they didn’t as much back then.”
“The most obvious change is the incredibly expanding smartphone screen,” Wohlsen reports. “Now with the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple has phone that is itself almost big enough to set in your lap. At the same time, laptops—especially Apple’s—kept getting thinner and lighter, encroaching on the iPad’s key selling points in the process.”
“The iPad is nice. You might still hang out together sometimes on the couch,” Wohlsen reports. “But when you’re done, you probably just put it down on the pile with all the magazines and mail and other stuff stacking up on the coffee table. It’s just another way to waste a little time.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wohlsen needs to keep up. The iPad is an incredibly productive machine. From IBM enterprise apps to image and video editing, the iPad is an enormously capable personal computer.
The #1 reason why iPad sales have plateaued is because Apple builds iPads so damn well. Apple iPads last for years and years. We’ve handed down gen-1 iPads to pre-schoolers, years ago, and they’re still working just fine! Thrown around, walked on, dripped on, you name it – the iPad just keeps on ticking. The upgrade cycle for iPads is simply not going to match the cycle for subsidized phones on two-year contracts and anyone who expects them to shouldn’t be writing about tech in general, much less iPads.