From Patently Apple:
While Apple toppled iPad expectations for 2016, the fact remains that for the year iPad sales dropped 14.1%, more than double the industry as a whole which fell 6.6%, according to the latest TrendForce report covering the tablet market. Apple’s total shipment for 2016 came in at 42.55 million units. Strong demand for iPad in North America and exceptional results from year-end holiday sales sustained iPad shipments last year.
. . . .
TrendForce report Anita Wang pointed out that “Apple has as many as three to four new iPad products lined up for 2017. In addition to an economically priced 9.7-inch model that is ready for market release, Apple will also launch a new 12.9-inch model. Furthermore, Apple will also introduce a new 10.5-inch iPad. This will be a new size category for the device series.”
TrendForce estimates that this year’s iPad shipments will fall by 6~8% annually to around 40 million units. There are reports of a “Pro” version of iPad mini being planned. If Apple decides to release such a product this year, the annual iPad shipments may stabilize and even register growth.”
Adding more “Pro” iPad models is simply means that more iPads will be able to use Apple Pencil.
. . . .
On the flip side, Amazon’s cheapo tablet market approach allowed them to double sales (99.4% to be exact) from last year and zoom to the number three spot worldwide with 11 million units. Anyone can sell cheapo tablets at a loss like Amazon, so on that count at least Microsoft is a pure competitor trying to innovate and make a profit. Microsoft also doesn’t want to enter the lower end of the model and compete with their Windows partners.
Link to the rest at Patently Apple
PG says disruptive technology always enters and builds in a market from the cheap side up. He doesn’t know if this is Amazon’s strategy, but bang for the buck is a powerful marketing and sales tool.
I like my Roku stick for streaming (though I did also hook up my Chromecast stick, because sometimes its easier to search on my tablet and then cast it to the TV than go in the other room where the computer is at to find things to play to my Roku).
I’d love it if the Roku stick would accept keyboard input.
As an old techie focused on laptop/desktop power, I always feel a certain obligation to try out technology for which I have no obvious need after it achieves a certain amount of popularity, just to keep my hand in.
I was late to smartphones (from Blackberries), and just picked up my first Echo. I’m fairly indifferent to both — email & phone are 95% of what I use a mobile device for, and the best use I’ve found for an Echo, as a voice-operated DJ, would require me to upload a huge local CD-ripped music library to the cloud just so it can download it back to me, and it can’t understand my foreign-language music track/playlist names anyway.
I’d rather watch long-form video on my TV (if I can figure out how), plus there’s that nasty satellite internet capped bandwidth issue that interferes with adoption.
For tablets (my only entry is the iPad2) I have only two compelling uses that are hard to match with anything else:
1) A device for presenting sheet music attached to a mic stand while fiddling (with foot device for turning pages) — way cool, since I can include recordings to match.
2) As teleprompter for recording audiobooks, also attached to a mic stand.
Pretty specialized uses for an expensive platform.
I’ve found that the best solutions for online video streaming are either a gaming console (because you get them for the games and the high quality streaming comes free) or a cheap streaming player like the FireTV stick. They also update their video apps regularly.
TVs and DVD players so a good enough job but the apps don’t get updated often enough, if at all.
The phablet ate the tablet.
Apple’s tablet sales started dropping with the introduction of the iPhone 6 Plus followed by the 6s and 7 “Plus” versions.
It’s amazing how much “working” space there is on 5.5″ phone screen compared to a 4″ or 5.7″ screen. When you subtract the required header and footer areas of the user-interface. Somewhere around 40% more space just moving from a 4.7″ phone to the 5.5″ one. The space increase for a 4″ to the 5.5″ is around double.
Very much so.
Phone OSes are limited compared to proper computer OSes like MacOS, Linux, or Windows but what the devices lack in power and flexibility they make up in mobility.
Tablets are tweeners. Bigger than phones but less useful than computers.
In general, a two device toolkit built around a phablet and a desktop (or laptop) better meets the needs of more people than a phone/tablet combo. It doesn’t help that both iPhone and iPad run the same apps and the phone is cheaper, more portable, and a phone as well as a media consumption device. Too much overlap, not enough differentiation.
Beyond phablets, I have to think 2 in 1 laptop/tablet combos running full Windows 10 are eating into this market at the high end, and Chromebooks of a certain sort at the low end, especially now that most Chromebooks sold can run Google Play Store apps.
Cobvertibles are kikling it but not just at the high end.
The high end is truly impressive; portable i7 cpus and midrange PC gaming GPUs in a tablet used to be unthinkable.
But the low end is just as impressive in a different way.
Some name brand competitors are cheaper than iPad minis.
Last time I searched on Amazon for “windows 10 tablets” there was a slew of products in the $100-200 range, and not just from no-name asian brands. HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, etc all have products in that range. All have USB, HDMI, and SD card slots. Even the pure slate form factors. That is a lot of computer for the money.
“The phablet ate the tablet.”
To some extent. But I believe you’ll find that the iPhone SE is one of Apple’s biggest sellers, even though it’s the red-headed stepchild of the family. The crappy little 4″ phone that they didn’t really seem to want to make, and left out features as though trying to convince people not to buy one.
I got one a few months ago to replace my old Android phone, because it was almost as large as a tablet, and too damn big to carry around all the time. If I want to read an ebook while I’m waiting in a queue, a 4″ phone is fine. If I want to do anything more serious, there’s a better device somewhere nearby.
I think the big problem with iPads is that they’re now good enough that there’s no reason to replace them until Apple makes the model obsolete. Whereas I get a new phone for free every two years, so why not?
(That said, if there isn’t an iPhone SE 2 by then, they’ll have to drag this one from my cold, dead fingers)
The issue isn’t Apple per se.
They sell tons. Still.
But the overall market for tablets is shrinking.
That is generally a sign of a mature, saturated market.
And that expected market growth is going elsewhere.
It wasn’t that long ago that pundits were proclaiming that tablets had killed the PC and we were in a Post-PC era. The reality is turning out to be different. I don’t (yet) think media tablets will go the way of the PDA but the possibility is no longer unthinkable with the way we are headed towards flexible, foldable displays.
The Global may yet become more than a TV show prop:
http://earthfinalconflict.wikia.com/wiki/Global
I do most of my writing on my laptop. But I don’t want to take it to bed. I carry an iPad in my pocket when I’m traveling, but I don’t want to have to take it everywhere I go. I carry the phone everywhere, because it’s a work phone, but I don’t want to write on it.
If there’s ever going to be some kind of ‘universal’ device, it will probably be a VR gadget that plugs directly into our brains. Until then, different devices are better at different things.
Sure.
Different folks, different needs.
But economics factor into what gets shipped and what sells. Consumer electronics are priced based on expected sales volume and if the volume doesn’t support the price the market will bear the product goes away. It has happened. Most often to specific brands and models but on ocassion the entire product category just implodes.
PC sales have been trending downward since the iPad was introduced. It seems unlikely they are going to rise anytime soon, if ever.
iPad sales have been declining in part because of cheap tablets, part because iPhones are getting bigger, and also because they last a lot longer than people anticipated. If you look in terms of Apple’s share of the market for internet access devices, Apple’s iOS dominates the market. Cheap tablets just aren’t used as often. Amazon’s devices are great for reading, but not used for a heck of a lot more.
Apple is also having some good results positioning the iPad Pro in business. (New deals with IBM and Oracle.) It seems clear that Apple is anticipating the iPad becoming more of a productivity tool to replace laptops.
Everything still seems to indicate Jobs was right about PC’s becoming the trucks and tablets (and large smart phones) becoming the cars. It may not be happening as fast as people expect, but the trend is still pretty consistent.
to abuse the metaphor a bit more, if PCs are trucks and tablets cars, there are a lot of people who decide to drive trucks, even if they don’t always need the hauling capacity.
(this is including pickups and SUVs as trucks)
Your Apple love is overpowering, sir. Cheap tablets are being used plenty, thats why their sales are up and iPad sales are down. iPad sales are down hard, while non-Apple tablets are rising. Non-Apple for the win, no matter how you slice it.
And non-Apple tablets are used for many things besides reading, even if one subset (Amazon devices) foolishly tried to follow Apple’s walled garden strategy. Not to mention the fact that rooting an Amazon device makes the walled garden moot (and its easy to find how to do it). Again, the NON-Apple way for the win.
Be a cheerleader for Apple, I’ll never give you grief for liking one product over another. But please stop trying to score points for your side by dissing the competition. Because you lose credibility in EVERY post when your Apple-love becomes other-hate. And you do often have decent points to make. So PLEASE, I beseech you, just keep it to Apple boosting.