FWIW, I think it's Apple's game to lose. The iOS 5 today uses the exact same interface as the iOS we saw 5 years ago. Eventually someone is going to iterate their software past Apple, and then we'll see whether Apple has the software vision to keep up (I'm thinking they don't).
Actually somebody already did. Microsoft gets a lot of flak for its design skills, but I think they did splendidly with WP7. Having used a Lumia 800 for a week I was extremely disappointed to go back to my iPhone 4S. I believe that the future of the smartphone market is a battle for supremacy between WP7 and Android, and I for one am rooting for WP7. Apple's last 'successful' iPhone might well be the next one they release, unless they have got something incredible cooking.
If someone is going to innovate past Apple, they can't just make a sligtly better iPhone or iPad, they need to invent the new product category that will make one of those devices irrelevant.
Not true, but I'm assuming you're referring to the springboard/icon/home button paradigm.
You think this isn't by choice?
"software" vision != TouchWiz, Motoblur, HTC sense, widgets or any of that crap.
"software" vision = ease of use, speed, elegance, stability, secured (NO viruses/malware/spyware), good developer support, good ecosystem.
Foxconn isn't going to hand Apple a permanent monopoly over efficient processes to the detriment of their domestic buddies. That's not how China works.
Every day that goes by, Apple's lead will erode in both quality of product and manufacturing advantage. It's not due to anything Apple will do wrong, it's due to how markets work, particularly in technology.
However, Apples biggest advantage is the enormous cash reserve they have, which enables them to get extremely good deals on essential parts such as flash memory and displays. This has nothing to do with where the devices are manufactured. Even when selling plastic tablets, other companies have a hard time matching the price of iPads (and now MacBook Airs).
You don't have to like it, but the answer is: the same country that now owns Hong Kong.
Foxconn is a Chinese company. It's why they're given special privileges that no foreign company can ever get, when it comes to everything from trade protections to labor regulations.
For one, Foxconn is Taiwanese, not Chinese, it's just that it has factories in China.
Second, money is how China works. Where does the delusion comes that China will ...sabotage Apple in chinese factories in order for Chinese device makers to win?
As a matter of fact, China is opening to be Apple's largest market, with raving reception this past year.
Tell me... how is "China" going to copy Apple's well-curated ecosystem of apps, content and accessories?
They're a Chinese company. Period. If China believed differently, they wouldn't be allowed to do what they do in domestic China.
China is nationalistic first, concerned with money second. That has always been the case and will always be the case. There's no amount of money that can buy you a lot of segments in their country; there are countless monster companies locked out of China right now, who would willingly pay countless billions just to get proper access to their markets - China promotes their domestic giants first, always.
Sure, after being called on it, you are suddenly "well aware".
Anyway, it's not a technicality by any stretch of the word --it's where the company was founded and where its headquarters are. A different country. Not to mention that they also have factories in 6-7 other countries besides China.
(Plus, it's not like China and Taiwan are in best terms, anyway, such that a taiwanese company could suddenly, by some mysterious process, turn into a "de facto" chinese one. Taiwan and China are not like US and Kayman Islands).
If China believed differently, they wouldn't be allowed to do what they do in domestic China. China is nationalistic first, concerned with money second.
I don't see China being any more nationalistic than the US is. At least they aren't invading all other the place, nor do they play "world cop". As for China protecting it's national interests, more power to them.
That said, who do you see Apple losing market dominance to this year (or next)? With phones, it was clear that carrier issues would prevent Apple from having massive market share. But carriers have little to no impact on tablet sales.
The success of Amazon and the B&N last year seems like it would make it even harder for Android tablets to find a foothold this year.
The assumptions by the slate article defy the nature of constantly improving hardware with falling prices.
The iPad, unlike the iPhone, doesn't get to benefit from the carrier subsidies that hide the real price from consumers. The radical majority of iPad sales are the wifi model. The iPad will be left to compete straight up on price, much like Apple's PC products.
Cheap tablets will dominate the market, Mr. Moore will make sure of it.
And much like in the music player market, I suspect the bulk of those cheap tablets will have an Apple logo on it. You do realize that Apple will also get to benefit from cheaper component prices? Only moreso than their competitors because they will be able to pre-order them in huge volumes.
I absolutely disagree. Unfortunately there is no data on how much each version of iPad has sold, but eBay says that Wi-Fi model accounts for about 60% of all (of their) iPad sales: http://www.quora.com/iPad/What-percentage-of-iPads-sold-are-...
On the other hand, it's been rumored that Apple (at least for the first batch of iPad 2's) had ordered 60% 3G and 40% Wi-Fi: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/04/over_60_of_app...
I believe the first (60% Wi-Fi), but still it's not * radical majority*.
Really great software for tablets takes massive resources to develop - e.g. GarageBand or the new iPhoto.
At the moment, Android tablets are caught in a chicken and egg situation - there isn't enough penetration to justify massive development efforts, and this seems to be getting worse, not better.
How do you see them overcoming this?
If you look at their profits in phones last year, Apple are making (by my estimate) $31 for every $1 their competitors make (8.7% market share 75% profits).
Look at how much Apple can slash prices and still have the majority of profits. We have not seen Apple get aggressive on pricing.
Consumers don't all want to own the same smart phone, in fact quite the opposite: consumers are completely unwilling to all own the same smart phone.
Then to top it off, the smart phone market is roughly 20 to 30 times larger than the iPod market. Which means a helluva lot more competition. There's also no simple blocking method available to Apple to own the smart phone market, unlike the iTunes + music licensing moat they had in music players.
The iPod had a moat around it courtesy of the extremely difficult dynamics of dealing with the music cartels. Apple broke the cartels and came to dominate them; nobody else was able to. Such problems don't exist in either smart phones or tablets.
"In reality, 2012 will be the year the iPad loses its market dominance in tablets. By the end of 2013, Apple will hold 1/4 to 1/3 of the market, which is exactly what their entire business model is designed around: lower market share, much higher margins."
Apple has a temporary advantage because they have used their cash reserves well and they have designed good products. But only a sycophant or a fool would believe that their advantage would last forever.
Edit: the comparison to the iPhone is apt, as modern phones such as the Galaxy Nexus are every bit as good as the iPhone in many ways and superior in others (more RAM, faster CPU, LTE, NFS, better front-facing camera, etc.)
Beyond bragging rights, how much of Apple's market actually cares about this?
At home I run a PC I built myself and have Linux running in various places and even I don't care what CPU/RAM specs my phone has. My decision to buy an iPhone was driven by my existing collection of iOS apps (I used an iPod as a PDA for a few years) and the general reliability of the iOS experience (stuff doesn't stutter, webpages render properly, few/no OS-level crashes, etc). Things like the camera were a definite plus but not deciding factors. The retina display was probably the biggest selling point of a 4/4S over a 3GS actually since it makes the whole iOS experience even more pleasant.
Those 3-1 are in the cheaper end of the market.
Those devices could as well be made out of cardboard.
You can't compare Android vs iPhone sales by lumping "get for free with a contract" Android devices in the lower tier of the market. They are sold to people who don't even care about the "smart" in smartphones, anyway.
That's why the iPhone has more profit despite less market share, and that's why the iOS App ecosystem makes 5 times the money the Android one does, and that's why iPhone users use 80% of the mobile web traffic while there are more Android devices.
Still, I think the big advantage of Android is the variety. There's pretty much an Android device for whatever it is you require, whether that's a phone with a built-in projector, a phone with a 41MP camera, a top-of-the-range quadcore smartphone or a cheap-as-chips-barely-a-smartphone smartphone.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qp...
This makes it pretty unlikely that your stat about data usage is right either.
http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri...
iOS originates 61% of mobile data traffic vs. 19% for Android.
Most of my circle of close friends are not geeks and Android frustrates them, it confuses them....and none of them, not a single one have even asked me about an Android based tablet other than the Fire and that doesn't even really count. Most of these friends are the ones that Samsung and other higher end Android devices would love to have as customers...highly educated with high disposable income. And they don't even consider their devices.
Variety is over valued in the geek community and just doesn't drive real profits in most cases and I believe this is one of them. Each of those unique phones has a lower profit ratio and drives a race to the bottom in quality because of it. None of them will drive enough sales to have a decent profit margin due to additional engineering, marketing, and support costs due to the different models.
Now, to be sure, Android isn't going away and eventually someone will find a way to make a dent in the iPad's market share but I just think the tablet market is very very different from the smart phone market. Everyone pretty much has a mobile phone and when you can get a smartphone for free you take it...but the tablet market is more discretionary and there and I just don't see people going away from iPad. If anything, the iPad could be what helps continue to drive iPhone sales since you can share your apps across devices.
Uh, that's a pretty bold assertion to make without bringing any data to back it up. How do you know that those consumers don't care about data access? How do you know that they don't "care about the 'smart' in smartphones"?
2 got droids, 3 got iphones. I've know the rough usage patterns of all the folks by asking what apps/services they use.
The droid users use it as a 1) phone, 2) email/message device, 3) maps and 4) one or two apps (not games). Basically, a google core-apps phone. One of the iPhone users is similar to the droid users (in addition, using the phone for taking photos/videos often).
Now the two remaining iPhone users are heavy data-folks. Both use bluetooth accessories, and in addition to the above uses, also play games, do twitter/social sharing, run lots of web searches.
Not a single of these users tethers or does advanced remote computing (ie, shell/vnc) - so are more "mainstream" users.
I contrast that with the Android users I know (including myself). I know of only one user who is still on a stock ROM. I don't know of any that have less than 15 apps.
If you haven't figured it out yet, most of the iOS users I know are older adults who value simplicity and ease of use. Most of the younger people I know value Android and are more than willing to accept a slightly higher initial complexity for vastly greater control. That's why I asked for data, specifically. It's very easy to draw incorrect conclusions by extrapolating from your own worldview, simply because your friends tend to be like you.
The only comparison I've seen between Android and iOS users is this (http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/17/smartphone-data-usage-jumps-89...) 9 month old study comparing the data usage between Android and iPhone users, and that actually stated that Android users consume more data than iPhone users. So, given that, I don't see how anyone can confidently assert that iPhone users use their phones more heavily than Android users. The (admittedly weak) data tells us the opposite, if it tells us anything at all.
Like Android today, Nokia had a huge market share. but that market share was useless because their users didn't give a shit about their crappy phones. their users were not spending money, etc.
(myself I always thought they had the best hardware and craptastic software)
Some of those people loved their Nokias entirely too much.
I always find it fascinating how the Apple arguments now center almost exclusively on who's making the most money. It's a fine argument to make, but it sure sounds shallow when you stack it up against the supposed Apple ethos.
You'll notice I didn't say Apple wouldn't dominate the profit center, much like they do in PCs.
I said they'll lose their market dominance. Their market share will erode until it finds a balancing point based on the iPad being at the high end of the product category. Apple has no interest in positioning the iPad anywhere else, so they will absolutely hold their pricing high.
Apple is a company, it's out to make money. What "Apple ethos"?
If anything, the Apple ethos is about designing highly usable, uncomplicated and beautiful devices and software. Which they kinda do --and has nothing to do with what part of the market they target.
I'd gladly agree, if that only was true. As an iPhone user, I tend to think, that "highly usable and beautiful devices and software" is on decline. They are more interested in keeping the market share, and more profit than giving people what they want.
The most annoying thing is that Apple is thinking that it does know better what their customers want. And after few weeks of whining, people usually agree. Since there is no point in disagreeing - nobody is listening.
Actually this thread is about the inverse: how Apple gets the most cash out of their customers providing some of the BEST prices for the device category.
To quote the article:
= =
Let’s go back to pretending you’re one of Apple’s competitors. How can you possibly beat the iPad? Well, not on price. Even before the new iPad, rivals were having a hard time matching Apple’s prices while still making a profit. Now that the cheapest iPad cost $399, they face an even tougher road. Because Apple has used its plentiful cash to corner the market on key tablet components—like touch-screen displays—many competitors will find that the only way to make a tablet with comparable features but a lower price is to sell it at a loss.
= =
Big profit margin != highest prices.
It's because of the streamlined design and product purity that they get to do so. Fewer models instead of confusion multitude of options means huge savings in economy of scale.
Insisting on quality vs quantity, translates to people wanting to buy their stuff despite them being on the high end of the market. Not to mention that given they cater the high end of the market, they do offer the best prices, or near. Can you find a cheaper touch tablet or phone? Yes. Can you find a cheaper tablet or phone that you feel it belongs in the same league? Hardly.
Except if you explain the iPad's success and Apple's 12 year rise with "sheep" and "fanboys" [], no company built something like the iPad, that a large number of people wanted to buy, UNTIL the iPad. And even after, judging from the mediocre sales of competitors.
[] which doesn't even explain how they went from 1-2 million customers and a company close to extinction to 80 million fanboys, much less how 1/4 of the US population can be an "Apple fanboy", or how a "fad" builds up and lasts for 12 years, which is an eternity in tech terms
Who ever said Apple wasn't going to try to maximize profit? I certainly didn't say that. So I'm not sure what your point is.
All that said, I do agree their tablet share will go down as competition increases, Android is too mature for someone not to close the gap in the next year.
"Because Apple has used its plentiful cash to corner the market on key tablet components—like touch-screen displays—many competitors will find that the only way to make a tablet with comparable features but a lower price is to sell it at a loss. You can’t do that unless you have some other way to make money, like a big digital media store."
That argument was used in regards to the iPhone as well. Apple's supposedly insurmountable component purchases would make it impossible for competitors to ... compete.
And there's Android, out activating the iPhone three to one. Apparently those Android phones are either made out of cardboard, or the manufacturers found components.
In reality, 2012 will be the year the iPad loses its market dominance in tablets. By the end of 2013, Apple will hold 1/4 to 1/3 of the market, which is exactly what their entire business model is designed around: lower market share, much higher margins.