“Apple’s new enterprise tablet, the iPad Pro did not achieve expected sales in its first month after the launch in China selling only 49,000 units, according to China-based research firm TalkingData,” Chia-Han Lee and Joseph Tsai report for DigiTimes.
“The device’s weak sales are believed to be the result of its high price, which starts at CNY5,888 (US$908),” Lee and Tsai report.
iPad Air 2 hit shipments of 557,000 in its first month, Lee and Tsai report, and the iPad mini 4 achieved 92,000 unit in China.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We wouldn’t trust these figures as gospel.
“Apple’s new enterprise tablet, the iPad Pro did not achieve expected sales in its first month …”
Expected by whom? The reporters? DigiTimes? Bill Gates? Eric Schmidt?
Except in an extremely few notable exceptions, e.g., where Steve Jobs said during the iPhone introduction that they wanted to get to at least 1% market penetration (cell phone market, not smart phone market) with the iPhone, Apple almost never publicly states any sales or market share goals.
And, as MDN implies, reported (non Apple released) numbers of units sold of literally *any* Apple product can be off by as much as a factor of 10 from reality. The vast majority of the time the reported numbers are mere extrapolations from an extremely small sample size, e.g., “I talked to an Apple store employee who said they only sold X iPad Pros that day. That means they only sold YYY for the entire month across all outlets.”, or are made up completely.
I’d like to see some data on how many Surface 4 tablets have been sold over the same period. Everyone says the Surface Pro 4 is so much better than any Apple tablet that everyone must have one. I’ve seen no real sales numbers on the Surface Pro 4 but they keep saying they’re selling out which means almost nothing depending upon production quotas. Seriously, how do these people get so much data on Apple product sales but not other companies’ products. It’s just downright weird.
Expected sales? Unbelievable. Since when does Apple give out “expected sales” numbers? Someone pulls some number out of the air and that becomes the set figure for sales of an Apple product and anything less than that number means failure. Comically unfair.
Apple could halt all rumors and speculation by being more transparent about sales data. Apple has not. Apple prefers rumors and speculation to the truth.
Why wouldn’t anyone need a giant, non-innovated iPad:
* almost double the price of a much more portable 9.7 iPad
* not a single “Pro” feature, port, or OS to speak of
* ridiculous waste of screen space
* 3D touch absent (Tim Cook FAIL)
* faster TouchID curiously absent (Tim Cook FAIL)
* no apps to support new screen size (even from Apple)
* overpriced, cheaply made accessories (a Tim Cook specialty)
* no accessories available at launch (Cook at his best)
* paltry, overpriced storage options (a Tim Cook favorite)
And we’re surpised it’s not selling well… imagine that!
😏
Same BS that you have posted time and time again. Why do you bother?
You haven’t addressed ANY of NSH’s criticisms. You haven’t made a convincing counter argument, fanboy. I have to conclude that you cannot develop a rational, intelligent, and thoughtful response.
Do you get tired of repeating yourself?
Get yerself a Surface Pro already and please move on.
Nothing fer you here.
U sound like a broken record
The first article I read on this topic used the word “activations” when citing the 49,000 figure. The headline, of course, screamed “just 49,000 sales”, but I think there is a good chance that someone got ahold of one data point: cellular activations. If true, it is further possible that those activations were from a single provider. I simply do not believe that in the whole of China only 49,000 iPad Pros have been sold.
Bulshit
iPad Pro is going to have a very specific audience so I wouldn’t expect it to sell like hotcakes in price conscious China.
iPads are selling about 10-12M per quarter (more in this current quarter). So at best we should expect maybe 2M Pros to be sold.
iPads are often used for content consumption. The Pro is the first iPad to be designed for creation. That specific market will be small at first but if Apple get it right then they could be on for a winner.
I spend a lot of time in China. China is NOT price conscious. The Chinese as a culture are extremely status conscious which is why western luxury brands do so well there.
There is a large number of people in China with a lot of money.
I live south of the border and I have been waiting for my iPadPro 128GB WiFi+Cell for over six weeks now (other models are easier to get). With such a product shortage, sales numbers do not reflect demand.
Bullshit. Such a shame that the media keeps reporting these third party firms that clearly don’t have accurate data.
Even if true, it probably reflects tight supplies, not weak demand.
95% of al tech and financial analysts are wrong 100% of the time. I know this to be true, because these are the figures that popped into my head while writing this post. 95% of all statistics are made up, this is one of them. 🖖😀⌚️
iPad pro is swirling, swirling, swirling in downwardly diminishing concentric circles soon to be swallowed up by that dark hole at the bottom, glancing off the porcelin into the Oblivion. Jobs would never have wasted his time on this. It’s vintage Cook. Flush him down the same commode.