Re:Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday July 22, 2014 @10:36PM
(#8072653)
The iPad hurt iPod touch sales alot, not really iPhone sales.
That wasn't GP's point. Whether Apple cares or not, if a larger iPhone hurts iPad sales, that's another reduction in the potential scope of tablet computing.
I would argue that a larger (than current) iPhone, which will be smaller (than current) iPad, running entirely identical software is tablet computing.
Why would you expect a larger (than current) iPhone to be running iPad apps?
Even a 5.5 inch iPhone would be closer in aspect ratio and size to a 16:9 4 inch iPhone than it would be to a 4:3 7.9 inch iPad Mini (let alone a full-size iPad). to me, that makes it obvious it would run scaled-up iPhone apps, not scaled-down iPad apps. In other words, a larger iPhone will clearly be on the "phone" side of the phone/tablet line.
If you want to argue that it is all a continuum and that the scope of touch-based computing hasn't changed, I'd agree with that. But in a thread that started by talking about iPhones, iPads and Windows 8, "tablet computing" is more specific than that.
And when the iPad first came out, it hurt iPhone sales a lot. Apple call this "cannibalization" and they've stated many, many times they don't care one bit about it.