Apple’s iPad lead will face pressure from Google and Nokia

Apple led the tablet market in Q3, but iPad’s honeymoon will be shorter than iPhone’s. Apple's headstart in the tablets market is giving the vendor a blissful honeymoon period in this market, where it has accounted for 95 per cent of sales in the third quarter, according to reports. Credible competitors will emerge for the …

[D. M]

NO YOU ARE WRONG

Simple, most "people" who buy iPad because it is fashionable. Tablet is currently still a largely useless (regardless who made it or what OS it runs on) toy. When it comes to sell over priced toy, no one in the world is better Apple.

BB, we all know what Apple (or Lord GOD Steve Jobs) wants.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail

Funny, then why is every tech manufacturer tripping and falling over each other to copy the iPad?

Expensive, are you blind? Every iPad competitor is sell a 7" tablet for the same price as Apple's 10" tablet; 55% less screen space, yes, that's right, 55% less. It's Samsung who is expensive, while Apple is much cheaper. Don't forget to get your malware ridden apps from the Android store.

[yeehaw....]

do a study on mob mentality.....

...why did people buy millions of pet rocks in the seventies?

[Eponymous Howard]

"Simple, most "people" who buy iPad because it is fashionable."

And your evidence is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whence Blackberry

Not a single mention of the BB Playbook? What's up with that?

Also, just because manufacturers are claiming to introduce tablets does not automatically mean a translation into market share. As to marketshare, it is blindingly obvious that Apple's share will come down. However, the total number of iPads sold will increase.

The article also mentions the Samsung Tab which, in my opinion, is too small and too expensive to be called a credible competitor.

I shall file this article so that I can have a chuckle in a year from now...

[studentrights]

Vaporware

BB Playbook = Vaporware

[Giles Jones]

Competition on price only

You really think Meego and ChromeOS are serious competition?

Familiarity is important. There are many Windows users who bought netbooks with Linux only to return them as they didn't like it.

There's quite a few people with iPhones or the iPod touch who will be able to operate the iPad with little or no reference to instructions. But Meego or ChromeOS? completely alien interfaces to most people.

The competition will largely be on price and Apple never lowers their prices much anyway.

[Mr Floppy]

They better be

Meego had better be competitive after Nokia shafted all N900 users.

The problem with linux on the netbooks was that manufacturers were lazy and did nothing to tailor the OS for the hardware. With Meego at least, hardware and software will be designed in unison. Well I hope it will be. I hope there will be a version of meego for us N900 users free of charge for a lifetime.

[MacroRodent]

The real reason Linux failed on netbooks

"The problem with linux on the netbooks was that manufacturers were lazy and did nothing to tailor the OS for the hardware."

Well, actually they did the HW tailoring, but a larger problem was they mostly picked Linux distributions few had heard before (Linpus, Xandros), with poor support. I wonder what would have happened if all had teamed up with, say , Ubuntu?

And then MS reacted by (A) spreading fud, and (B) giving an extra sweet Windows XP deal, maybe also some good old-style arm-twisting related to Windows licenses for the manufacturer's larger computers). I suspect such dealings are the biggest reason why Linux netbooks are hard to find nowadays.

I have a couple of relatives using an Asus EEE 700 or 900, and the fact they run the original bundled Linux has never been a cause for complaints. They are used almost exclusively for net surfing anyway. The stuff about "unfamiliar interface" is utter nonsense.

With respect to tablets, there is even more room for something new. Nobody expects them to work like Windows PC:s (where the interface is dependent on a large screen, keyboard and mouse), so I think MS has a real cause for fear here. The "cut-rate XP" solution wont work.

[M Gale]

Difference between "computers" and "toyphones".

People have been conditioned to accept Windows as The Thing That Real Computers Use. Toyphones and their big brothers are a different thing though. They've always had their own special little OS depending on manufacturer, so I don't think you're violating expectations by providing something that's not Windows-based so long as it's stupidly simple to use.

I'm wondering more what Google's plans for Chrome OS are. Android is already a success story, and chucking yet another OS into the mix seems counter-productive. If this new product is a glorified browser, then why not make the Android browser do the same thing?

Unless of course El Goog were to pitch Android as a consumer OS, with all the whizzy apps and the marketplace, and Chrome OS as a serious business OS, with everything stored securely at a company server. Good for company phones, information kiosks and the likes.

Hm!

[rsk]

sounds like a good analysis, but...

Well - here is what I learn here.. we got iPads flying out the shelves at approx 4M per quarter. And your analysis seems to point out that by 2015, it will still be flying out at 4M per quarter (20% of 80M) - would this make sense to you?

[what is this?]

Apple

Don't sell Jobs short. He has a few more tricks left in his selves.

[Chemist]

"tricks left in his selves."

Christmas is coming - do you mean ELVES ?

[Steve Davies 3]

Guess who's not coming to the Table(t) for Dinner then?

Is there going to be any room left for a viable share of the market (After IOS, Android, Chrome & MeeGo have taken their share) for Microsoft?

Will their latest Mobile offering scale up to a 7in or even a 10in screen?

[Geoff Campbell]

Windows Phone 7

I've been playing with an HTC HD7 for a couple of days, and I have to say that I'm impressed. Seems to use the small screen space well, performs well, reasonable selection of apps considering how recently it was released.

I think Microsoft have announced that they won't be pushing it for tablet use, though. And I think that's a mistake. On a 7" or 9" tablet, Phone 7 seems to me to make a heap more sense than Windows 7. On bigger tablet, maybe, maybe not, but the licence cost of Windows 7 is certainly going to skew the market badly.

I think I'd still go for Android, personally, but it does rather depend on the overall package.

Interesting times ahead.

GJC

[Tempest]

Apple was SECOND in the world market; only first in the US market

The Chinese beat EVERYONE to market with their Android pad which was selling in the stores by December last year. Apple only hit retail months later ... in the U.S.A.

Even though Apple knocked off the concept (and the name!) it STILL lacks the connectivity of the Chinese originals. The ONLY connector they missed was the 25pin printer standard! They fitted as many as all other connectors as they physically could PLUS an SD memory chip.

Now you can buy iOS knockoffs there and they are way, way cheaper than Jobs' pad. Sure the Chinese don't pay for the iOS, but it didn't cost Jobs' much, either, as ir was ported from the phone.

[Goat Jam]

Hey look

My "ipad" has a usb port!

Pity it is totally fucking horrible in every other respect though.

But look, it has PORTS!!

[JaitcH]

Knock off Apple phones multiplying like rabbits in China

The real Apple products cost way too much for a typical Chinese discretionary spending budget.

APPLE Lemon 4 knock-offs are selling at around $90 a piece and difficult to spot the visual differences. Performance is definitely different - no Grip of Death! Available at any electronics market across the country and HongKong.

[Anonymous Coward]

@JaitcH

Hows your Android Sieve, fandroid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Apple was SECOND in the world market

Tempest wrote: "Even though Apple knocked off the concept (and the name!)"

Wow! What an insight!! Probably Apple's only genuine invention is the (truly) magic hypno-ray Steve uses to dazzle and mislead the world - other companies would kill for that technology! It's a wonder that no one else has come up with a "reality distortion field." It must be real, because knowing people like Tempest haven't been taken in by it and have been able to independently observe its effects on everyone else.

Most people have been hypnotised into thinking that Android isn't tablet ready even now. They also think the tablet concept wasn't invented by Apple - MS has tried for a decade - but they breathed new life into it by calculated risk-taking and tremendous design effort. We've even been deluded into thinking that Apple actually designed the iPad before the iPhone.

We should all say a big thank-you to Tempest. After all, isn't it much more plausible that Apple came up with the term 'iPad' by scouring the world for an unknown product name from an obscure company rather than playing on the name of its wildly successful iPod. Steve is a real fiend, eh? And they probably whipped up the iOS between the release of the Chinese tablet and the release of the iPad - the demo Steve did was probably all faked with smoke and mirrors. And after all, it doesn't look anything like the iPhone, so it probably makes sense that Apple just waited for the Chinese to produce something it could copy.

Tempest, your efforts are wasted writing here. You should be working for a UFO-spotter's newsletter!

[Chris Parsons]

It baffles me

How anyone with a functioning brain can downvote this post. It's just fact. You might not like it, but it's true.

[Synthmeister]

Nope

The reason why other OEMs came out with "different" form factors than the iPad is because none of them could match the price of the 10" iPad unless they went with a 7" or 5" screen. Competitors may have learned some lessons from the iPhone, but so did Apple.

1. Avoid the telcos whenever possible. Note how the iPad is almost completely independent of the telcos. Note how the iPad is already on sale in China, no telcos involved.

2. Get your retail network in place as fast as possible. The iPad is already in every possible retail outlet--Walmart, Target, BB, Amazon, AT&T and even Verizon! People looking for a tablet this Christmas will only see iPad.

3. Ecosystem--iPhone was born into a very limited ecosystem compared to the iPad--Apps, e-books, iAds, podcasts, peripherals, music, movies, TV-shows, all ready to go. The newer slate OSes have squat.

4. Aggressive pricing--Apple has really gone for the pricing jugular on this one and will continue to do so because they can already count on selling 10s of millions of units. They other OEMs really can't make that bet. Note how there are virtually zero 10 inch tablets ready in time for Christmas that match Apple's quality and price.

5. Economies of scale: Apple alone will sell 80 million tablets in two years, forget 2015. They are already on track to sell close to 15 million tablets in 9 months and predictions are running around 40 to 50 million in 2011. Apple is sharing major components/OS/development/Apps between four major iDevices now--iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and the AppleTV. This gives them huge economies of scale that no one else has. And everyone else wants to use multiple form factors, OSes, app stores, etc. which will be their undoing

[Mark 65]

Definitely nope.

"4. Aggressive pricing--Apple has really gone for the pricing jugular on this one and will continue to do so because they can already count on selling 10s of millions of units. "

For the $1099 they charge for the top of the line iPad I can buy a 15.6" i5 Samsung laptop. It may well be apples and oranges in terms of form factor but that isn't competitively priced in anyone's language when you bear in mind the ultimate capability of each.

The problem is that Apple prices things competitively within their own line-up which, let's face it, is a parallel universe of pricing in parts. I am an Apple user by choice, more the OS than anything else, and I cannot be arsed with the hassle of Hackintosh's so I face facts and pay up.

[jubtastic1]

but but but

You can also buy a 15" laptop with better specs than the top end iPad for less cash than the entry level iPad. THIS SHOULD BE A MASSIVE CLUE THAT YOUR COMPARISON IS BROKEN.

If what you want is a device with a big enough screen you can hold in one hand and which lasts all day on a charge, someone saying "you could have bought a laptop for less money" is as useful and violence inducing as someone else pointing out how lame your laptop is compared to their cheaper desktop.

Back to the point, It's pretty clear at this point from the me too products that are starting to appear that iPad pricing is unusually aggressive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Price?

Archos do a 10" Andriod tablet at about £250

Dixons have a 10" one at the same price.

Tosiba have a 10" Android at £330

Theres a Meego based WeePad 11" pad out at €450 (£387)

These all have capcitative touch screens and are expandable while the most basic fixed capacity 16GB IPad Costs £450.

[Steve McPolin]

ipad killer

At least they aren't flogging that poor beast this time around. What competition will iPad face from imitations? Price?

Maybe snoracle could squish a sun-ray setup into a tablet and offer a truly different entry, but otherwise its like pepsi - you only order it if you can't get a coke.

[Anonymous Coward]

even Zenyatta lost on her 20th

why not apple? even lost, what matters more is pride.

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/columnists/view/20101107zenyatta_loses_nothing_in_losing_perfection/srvc=sports&position=also

[jbelkin]

iPad has no competition

There is no software reason to buy an android pad. Androids entire audience are bargain hunters, androids pricing strata is very limited - above $300, why not buy a pc net book while the closest MacBook is $999. If samsung sells 100,000 units it'll be amazing ... A win tablet will sell better. Androids market share is gained by giving the phones away - appleisnt interested in the bargain hunters smartphone buyers nor are they interested in the cheap iPad knock over market ... So sure, apple will lose some market share but like theprofit market share, apple will always be #1 in a runaway. Apple made 8 billion selling 14 million phones - nokia made 9 billion selling 110 million phones ... That is theonly math that's important.

[Anonymous Coward]

Math fail?

Not sure where you got your numbers, but the assertion that "Apple made 8 billion selling 14 million phones" (implying a profit of $571 per phone) is ridiculously OTT.

[JEDIDIAH]

Tripping over the garden wall.

> There is no software reason to buy an android pad.

The software reason to buy an android pad is obvious. You want to do something that Steve won't allow. That could be any number of netbook-esque things that an iPad could do if only Steve would allow it.

The truth of the matter is that most people don't need a lot. However, they need what they need. If an alternate doesn't provide what they need, they won't use it.

This applies equally well to PhoneOS as it does Android.

[Andy Baird]

NOOKcolor description

"Like its mono cousin, the device does have... a smaller second screen for navigation."

Say what?? I looked at the product page on B&N's website, and I certainly don't see any secondary screen in the photos or description.

[Dave Barnhart]

The Honeymoon is Over for the iPhone???

The real test of whether-or-not the iPhone's honeymoon is over will arrive when there is version offered by Verizon. If any of the other cellphone vendors survive then yes, the honeymoon is over.

[Neil 7]

MeeGo, Nokia and competition

If another vendor wants to use MeeGo in the same markets that Nokia already play in they can and there's nothing Nokia can do about it. This article tries to drum up some fake tension where MeeGo, Nokia and mobile devices from other vendors are concerned but the truth is that MeeGo is owned not by Nokia (or Intel) but by the Linux Foundation and they have no hidden agendas, and will certainly not support one member (ie. Nokia) in favour of another. Their only objective is to develop and promote MeeGo transparently and without any restrictions, ie. true open source.

[Goat Jam]

Credible competitors

Once again thanks to apple we are finally seeing some actual innovation and improvements where before we only had market dominance by an oligarchy of incumbents whose only motivation was to maximize the profits pouring in from their legacy product lines.

We saw the iphone totally shake up the festering smart phone mobile to the point that people now want to, SHOCK, HORROR, actually use the internet on their phones, which was something that manufacturers pushing for years before hand.

Before the iphone came along manufacturers and carriers alike were totally without clue as to why Joe Public had unanimously awarded their efforts with the Epic Fail award and actively avoided their products.

Thank god that BB came along and fixed email on the smartphone and the iphone fixed everything else. Now all the other manufacturers are still trying to catch up but at least they are fucking doing something instead of doing their normal thing of producing any old crap they like and relying on the fact that there is nothing better around for people to buy.

Hopefully the same will happen for tablets. WinTablets have been around for almost as long as mob phones and have been treated with similar disdain by the buying public. Undaunted WinTel just kept on putting out the same old products apparently using the theory that if they keep building it then eventually they will come, right?

It didn't work and now they too are having their arses handed to them by apple.

Whether you use apple products or not, you at least have to give them credit for shaking up the market and putting an end to the endless of flow of uninspired dreck that it has been producing for at least a decade.

[Anonymous Coward]

Th Chinese appear to be...

making a strong move into Linux. This may be very good news for Linux users and it may spur Western govs and corps to provide a little more investment in what will be the OS of choice in the near future. At this point I'd also like to mention the BSDs, great OSs with too little promotion.

So, the Chinese are really making things happen and kudos to them. The, largely. unrestrained capitalism is a much better system..........oh wait

Maybe something somewhere between the two systems. Human rights and privacy, but with more incentive for longterm planning as opposed to short term again. The funny thing is that longterm reward should be the goal in itself, apparently not.

[steve75oz]

ipad 2

I will be definitely buying iPad 2 when it comes out, I skipped the first model.

I have a iPhone 3GS which is almost out of its 18 month contract and i'm looking at jumping ship to an Android HD Desire (or later), however given my (smallish) investment in some iPhone apps, it would be fantastic to be able to leverage those into an iPad without shelling out again - brilliant.

Plus there is some fantastic adventure games that I'd love to play on a big touch screen. Some say the tablet form factor is vapourware - but I really don't think that argument holds much water. For starters I use my mobile phone in bed to read the news, which is becoming downright annoying now.

Apple's ecosystem of devices that allow you to share purchased apps, games, videos and such is a masterstroke move which I think is a very compelling story for most.

I don't think Android as a platform is (yet) up to the task of running on a tablet form factor, and the apps probably aren't either. Google themselves acknowledge this and therefore will take some time as they play catch up. Running Windows 7 on the tablet is downright laughable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Price drop please.

Tablets are good devices for consuming media, but as most of us have a few devices that do that already, the price is going to have to come down before I consider getting one. I'd love to have one to keep next to my bed or maybe read on the bus, but my phone will have to do for now.

[Wpgwill]

Title here...

I believe there is a law against that many buzzwords in a single article.

[ThomH]

Don't worry, they paid for them

"iPad’s honeymoon will be shorter than iPhone’s."

The current exchange rate is one buzzword for two definite articles. By sticking with the amateurish prose of an American blogger elsewhere, lots of extra buzzwords became within budget.

[Johnny Tremaine]

(Rolls eyes) Come on, REALLY?

I'd love some great competition against Apple's iPad, to keep Cupertino on their toes, but come on, let's be realistic here; neither the Tab or Nokia's Meego OS on a tablet are serious competition.

It'll likely come from Android Gingerbread or even Google's Chrome, if anything. Maybe HP's Palm-Pad.

BTW, if a single Meego tablet sells even *half* as much as the iPad's current numbers, I'll eat my hat.

[Geoff Campbell]

For you, maybe not. For others?

I can't conceive of a use for a ~10" screen tablet, as most of my usage is on the move. For that, a 7" tablet makes way more sense, and I'm seriously considering the Galaxy Tab. Android 2.2 is perfectly good on a tablet, even if 2.3/3.0 will be better.

GJC

[Average-Developer]

Nokia is always late/

If you are going to develop something that runs on mobile platform you have to have the group of developers that can do that. Nokia cuts 1800 developers from Symbian OS, throws them away.

MeeGo team is in 10’s times small than Symbian's team.

It is the REAL FAKE that Nokia will be able to deliver MeeGo-Pad soon.

Let wait for 3 years, or not!!!, for 2 years, Nokia is always late something like that.

Because their VPs and CEOs get always frozen in gold Finland.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia's OS on a tablet...

http://wetab.mobi/en

[D. M]

@Apple worshippers

I will try to keep this discussion as much meaningful (even I doubt those would understand, who live inside Steve Jobs' reality distortion field).

1. Popular does not mean good. Neither is fashionable or good looking. For example: AIDS/HIV is pretty popular, drugs are fashionable, and majority of questionable human beings are not bad looking.

2. People are stupid (everyone of us), face it.

3. People do not buy good products. People buy good marketing products. Whether the product is good or bad does not matter. Marketing is a very powerful tool. Anything can be sold to public with the right marketing trick.

4. People buy things they do not need. If everyone only buys with really good reason, the economy system we have will shut down.

Now to help you reducing your waste of money, do this simple test (welcome to test your "friends" purchase decision):

DO I REALLY NEED TO BUY <insert product name>? Do I have at least one valid good reason?

Reasons like these are NOT valid:

1. because all my friends have this

2. because it looks nice

3. because I already spent too much on <insert name>

4. because it may do something or I may like it

@Goat Jam: I do agree with you that iPhone made mobile internet usable for general public. iOS might be the first proper consumer smartphone OS that is not retarded. I for long wanted to have a "smartphone" that I can take everywhere, and browser internet (and run other stuff). But none of those before iPHone was usable (ok, some are okay for 5mins). I wanted something that runs a proper OS with a proper browser. iPhone failed on the browser part, but it lifted the bar. Android learned from iOS, and give a (finally) proper OS, proper browser, and freedom to its users. That's why I bought Nexus One. If it wasn't iPhone, a proper smartphone like Google Nexus (looking forward for Nexus two) would not exist now (maybe some years later).

[DaveyP]

Wow, thanks

We're so lucky to have you to tell us what to think. Thanks so much.

(presume you REALLY NEEDED TO BUY a Nexus 1, then. Couldn't have lived a minute longer without one)

[Tom 38]

Fucking sheeples, get with DM's program

If you aren't following his buying guide yet, time to fall in line and do as he says, stop being sheeples and buying stuff because you think it looks good or you will enjoy using it.

If you haven't got a 15 point by point explanation of why you bought something, apparently you are a moron who is just buying what his Steveness tells you.

I bought an ipad for 3 main reasons:

1) It's pretty and looks fun

2) I had plenty of spare cash

3) See 1)

and its satisfied all my main criteria!

Since I've had it:

Any time I use it on the tube or train, 75% of people in the carriage start paying attention

Any time I use it in the office, 25% of people ignore it, 25% of it want to stroke it, 25% want to borrow it, and 25% tell me that I'm a moron for buying an ipad, and they're getting their android one 'Real Soon', once 'The Right One' comes out (and want to stroke the ipad).

Personally, I don't give a monkeys what you all think. I'm stroking my ipad RIGHT NOW. mmm, shiny.

[Tom 38]

This article is from the Department of The Bleeding Obvious

iPad has basically had no competitors for a year, and so has 95% market share of tablet computers. Now competitors are being released, iPad is going to reduce its market share - shocker!

What might have been interesting is discussion on whether their share will drop, but shipments rise, indicating whether the market size is growing.

Also, any chance you can stop banging on about the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It's not a good device, it's sluggish, small, slow and expensive. A much better comparison would be the Archos 10.1 (£300) or Archos 70, (£230).