“Amazon proved over the holidays that ‘good enough’ might be, well, good enough, for a large segment of tablet buyers,” Daniel B. Kline writes for The Motley Fool. “That’s bad news for Apple since it shrinks the market for the company’s higher-priced iPads, though the top-tier iPad Pro seems to be competing for a different user altogether.”
“In the fourth quarter of 2015, which includes the tablet-friendly holiday season, sales for all devices fell to 65.9 million units shipped — a 13.7% year-over-year drop, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker,” Kline writes. “Total shipments for 2015 were 206.8 million, down -10.1% from 230.1 million in the prior year.”
“Overall, the market had few bright spots in the the year or the quarter, but two clear winners emerged — Amazon’s $50 Kindle Fire and hybrids powerful enough to serve as PC replacements. Shipments of those devices, led by the iPad Pro, reached an all-time high of 8.1 million devices, according to IDC,” Kline writes. “But, while Apple continued to lead the market, the company saw a -24.8% year-over-year decline in Q4, and you blame a lot of that on Amazon.”
“Going forward, tablets are going to become a lot like the computer market. Some people will pay more to have an Apple product, but a lot of that audience will go all-in and buy a top-tier iPad Pro. The rest of the market will balance features against price, opting for cheap, good enough devices even if their hearts really want iPads.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s always a market for junk. Apple doesn’t want that type of customer. Amazon can have them. As with personal computers, smartphones, and smartwatches, Apple will simply do what they always do: Take the bulk of the tablet market’s profits and leave the dreck for the barrel-scrapers.
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When will Apple’s iPad sales finally bottom out? – February 4, 2016