I watched some Xoom demo and they showed, briefly, some primitive video editing software -- my initial thought was Oh-Oh Motorola is tipping their hand that they will supply some "House Apps" to compete with Apple's "House Apps".
Of course, the iMovie preso at the iPad 2 announce put those fears to bed.
But, on reflection, say MMI, Sammy or any of the "Android tab-mfgrs-to-be", wants to differentiate themself by supplying a "House App".
.
Heh, if Samsung and MMI are thinking of offering their own "house apps", I don't think they can come up with a bigger rock to tie to their necks and jump into a lake with. [We can't already match Apple in the hardware department where we at least have some expertise so let's go at them in the software department where we have near-zero expertise.]
A lot of companies think writing software is just a matter of hiring software engineers. If Microsoft, the biggest software company in the world, can't even match Apple in software, what chance do Samsung and Moto have? About as much chance as Sony. (Snigger, snigger, muffled laugh.)
This is seriously incredible considering the ho-hum tablet market forecast one year ago. I hear people bashing the iPad occasionally, and it's either because they read something on some asshat blog, or they're the type that doesn't want to want what other people want, so they have to knock it down to calm their wanting-ness. Anyone who has actually used one loves it.
Only if Apple rests on its laurels. The thing that concerns me however, if the iPad does indeed go on to dominate the tablety market, is when the cries of "monopoly" will start. Any company that has 80%+ share of a market will surely attract the attention of government stooges. The assumption is that no company can be so good as to dominate a market legally and legitimately. "All corporations are evil" is the anti-business battle cry.
I don't mind Apple having a monopoly. But it depends on how the market is defined. There are people who have been trying to get the MAC declared a monopoly, because it's the only computer system that's a, uh, Mac, and so controls the Mac market.
The only problem with being declared a monopoly, is that it narrows what you can do. It can't be seen as anti-competitive. Otherwise, no big deal. The iPod could be declared a monopoly in the USA, because it's got 73% marketshare, and has for years. But no one's bothered.
MS Office could be declared one as well, because it's got a 95% marketshare in office software, but no one's bothered there either.
Some people will have very limited uses for a tablet and may choose a different brand if they only wanted to serf the web. Of course that would require someone to release a tablet that is significantly cheaper then the iPad. That was widely predicted a year ago, but it seems that isn't going to materialize. Google is still good enough to be an underdog, but they will continue to have trouble competing with too many offerings on the table. Google tablets will also suffer from supply chain issues related to too many different devices out there. As long as they never stagnate, Apple will stay on top.
It might be interesting if they could do the same to the phone market if they release a lower-end iPhone to compete with the Android market. A superior supply chain coupled with a very good product might allow them to overtake the low-end smartphone market where Android is making large share gains.
Some people have been rooting the Nook Color and putting Android 2.1 to 2.3 on it. One guy even put Honeycomb on, but I don't know how well it works with that.
I have to admit I was surprised when I looked at the teardown for it. It's a better device than I though it was. It's got a Cortex 8, with 512MB RAM, 8GB flash, a gpu, forget which one, an SD slot. So it's not at all that bad. It goes for $250, but some people have found it for $200.
The price may be subsidized though, as it's assumed the Kindle is. If so, it would cost more if sold as a tablet, but I don't know by how much.
The difference is that Apple has learned from their failure. You can look at the iPod for an example. They are willing to price their products as low as the competition is pricing theirs.
I think apple was prepared to lower the cost of iPad2 if Samsung or Motorola had come out with products that were competitive with the 499. I was ready for a 350 price during Mr Jobs presentation. And because Apple has the supply chain that they did not have with the original Macs, it's ready to challenge anyone with enough cajones to step to the plate.
I wasn't ready for $350. I don't think they could make a profit on that. But they could have lowered the price by just a bit, and it would have cleared out the major makers.
For example, if they could have dropped the price to $479, and the 3G/GPS upgrade to $100, they would have damaged the Xoom pricing beyond repair. The Xoom is $799 for 32Gb and 3/4G, this would have dropped Apple's to $679 for the same configuration, and to $779 for the 64GB model, dropping it below the Xoom.
But Apple might not have been able to do that. They've already stated last year that they're going with lower margins. The new touch screen is supposed to be costing Apple $30 more than the old one, and that would be enough to prevent a price cut.
We can't just cut some arbitrary number off a product's price and assume it can be done.
I think the key post iPad 2 story will be is laptop cannibalization.... I see growth in laptops to drop 50%. Everyone that needs one has one, and all those people who have one don't need another one.
Samsung, Motorola, BB... they aren't fighting for 2nd place, they're fighting for marketplace relevancy.
Apple is the only company that seems to have leadership/growth/dominance/convergance across all those lines.
I think that Apple demonstrated a lot of foresight on the tablet market:
-They recognized that, although Apple can gain market share, the notebook market is saturated. What do people want, to run their Word documents faster?
-They recognized that the "netbook" category, especially those in the 8-11 inch range, don't really provide any sort of quality or experiential difference relative to notebooks. Yet, they covered that section with the MacBook Airs with very little compromise on features.
-They took their time in developing a solid product, both in hardware and software. You can see the difference when you compare this to rushed-out products like the Xoom.
-They got great deals on their suppliers/manufacturers, allowing them to hit the bottom of the price points for once. Usually, people pay a premium.
-They knew that a successful tablet (at least in 2010-2011) would be all touch, no physical keyboard, no rotating hinge, and run mobile software rather than personal computer software. They also provided a top-notch software environment (App Store + 1st party software like Pages).
It's no wonder that Apple has cornered this market. Everyone mocked them last January but once again they are all struggling to catch up now.
Apple once had a tremendous lead in personal computers, now they have 3-4% of a market dominated by Microsoft Windows (92+%). Only a couple of years ago Apple seemed to have a totally insurmountable lead in smartphones, today the IPhone is #3 in the US and #4 in the world, and Android, which nobody took seriously only a year ago, is number one in the world (both in sales and total units in use). Apple is the clear leader in a market which had essentially zero competitors until about a week ago (when the Xoom came out) and it is clear that Motorola pushed the release date earlier then they wanted (Flash won't be working until this Friday and the SD card and 4G even later then that) in order to get in before the IPAd 2). But as more and more Android tablets are released with better specs then the IPad 2 (even the Xoom beats the IPad hardware in virtually every category, and better quad core units are on the way) and almost certainly lower prices, the IPad 2 is going to take a big hit. Remember that Android is free and open and works very well, and even one of those criteria would make Android tablets a serious threat to Apple.
Look Jobs wouldn't continue to harp about how fragmented and silly Android was if he wasn't worried about it. He isn't worried about Windows mobile 7 or RIM, because they suck so bad, but if Android phone and tablet sales continue to increase at their present rate (about 900% in just one year) in a few years Apple will be about as relevant in mobile computing as they are in presently in PCs. I would love to see Apple remain a serious force in mobile computing, but IPods are going to disappear soon (it just doesn't make sense to have a separate device that doesn't do anything that any smartphone can do), Macs are a tiny niche market, Iphones are losing market share rapidly to Android, and there are finally going to be competitors to IPad. If Apple doesn't open their OS to other companies then IOS will whither away, that's just a fact.
No offence, but your analysis and your numbers are all way off. You're talking like it's still 1995. It isn't.
Apple's market share is much closer to 8-9% for starters, and what percentage of the market Apple had in the early days of the computer industry 20 or more years ago is hardly relevant to today's market. If you eliminate the business segments and talk only about consumer computer purchases Apple is close to 25% of the current market and growing at many times the rate of it's competitors.
Channel sales of Android powered handsets are indeed up, but the iPhone is still the most popular phone in the market by a wide margin and picked by consumers many multiple times more than any particular Android phone. iOS as a platform is also surging far ahead of Android, selling far more devices year to year and capturing a bigger slice of the market year by year. iPhone and iOS are both clearly the dominant players in any rational assessment of the facts. Android only "wins" if you engage in the false metrics of comparing all Android handsets to a single iPhone, or comparing them on an OS to OS level, but leaving out all the iOS devices that aren't "phones."
Furthermore, the only Android tablets that are even close to release are niche players. They use 16:9 formats, or a small screen, and aimed at a very specific young, male, "techie" demographic. Many of these are also only available in the USA and won't be sold world-wide as iPad is. The only product I'm even aware of that will seriously compete against the iPad across all markets in all countries and match it feature for feature, is the WebOS tablet from HP that isn't out yet.
Apple not only has the market to itself, it has at least a full year on the competition. They would have to sit still and wait for a year for the rest to catch up, or someone has to leapfrog over them. both seem really unlikely IMO.
As Balmer and his flying monkey brigade announce there won't be ANYTHING from Nokia/Microshaft until next year..... teehee... can you say, "BYE BYE" ????
The only thing stopping me adding more AAPL at the moment is their huge pile of cash.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a positive thing to hold a decent amount, and I wait with interest to see what they do with it, but it's the sort of thing that no matter what Apple spend it on, the market will probably over-react and send their stock down, and that could represent an opportunity to buy at something of a discount.
Seems to me that Apple have already demonstrated what they are spending their money on ... a huge data center and a policy of buying up massive quantities of parts/components for their devices. The smart thing about that is it benefits Apple in two ways ... adds to their sales/bottom line and freezes out their competition. Give me a company with no debt and a ton of $$$$$ anytime.
hope the "old days" of lack of inventory while others catch up won't affect future sales perhaps people will just accept as in the last many introductions, "sell out" and stay loyal
i would
but apple must respond quickly to inventory issues
also is apple facing a fragmentation issue, with all the combinations available
i wonder if there is a stat for which are the most popular #1#2#3
i also wonder how many were just bought to sell on ebay or europe
You bring up a very good point -- all the different SKUs of the iPad and iPhone.
It is so unlike Apple to offer multiple, overlapping products.
I was surprised that Apple offered a CDMA iP4 instead of a combined GSM/CDMA world phone.
I was even more surprised that they did the same thing with the iPad 2.
We know, from what Tim Cook has said, that Apple plans to offer world iDevices -- just that currently there are too many sacrifices (cost, availability, battery).
The old Apple would have done nothing -- or waited until it became practical.
The fact that, color aside, Apple doubled their SKUs -- tells me that they plan to "own" the tablet market and gain the market share lead in the smart phone market.
They are willing to sacrifice interchangeability/universality and create manufacturing/distribution problems to attain these ends.
I do believe that Apple is serious... very serious!
Apple not only has the market to itself, it has at least a full year on the competition. They would have to sit still and wait for a year for the rest to catch up, or someone has to leapfrog over them. both seem really unlikely IMO.
That assumes that Android Tablets are equal to the original iPad. Hardware spec-wise, yes they surpass, but not overall experience or "polish." Therefore, the iPad is certainly MORE than 1 year ahead of the competition.
Food for thought:
When Apple launched the iPhone (Jan 2007), Steve Jobs said it was 5 years ahead of the competition. Well, a bit over 4 years later and I still don't anything as widely "finished" or "polished" as iOS - Android included. Keep in mind that iOS has not fundamentally changed since launch (incremental feature updates along the way, of course). But the core OS is the same, and it trumps all competitors to this day. The closest I would say would actually be WinPhone 7, due to MSFT's (relatively) tight grip on hardware specs and end-user experience. But that just came out in October, nearly 4 years after the iPhone was debuted, and lacks many features users want.
Wouldn't it be just terrible for you if Apple declares a one time dividend of $30 per share as of some time of record for share ownership, and you were still dithering over their cash?
Based on what they've said, I don't see them paying a dividend anytime soon, and if they do, I'll just accept it on what I already hold.
I just suspect if Apple do any serious spending with the cash, even if they get the best deal in the world, the market will ding the stock.
Actually, there was a brief period when the Apple II line bested the TRS-80 (the king of the hill at the time); alas, the IBM PC came out shortly after that and the rest, as they say, is history.
TRS-80?
Are you "Trash Talking?"
... take out the papers and the trash -- or you don't get no spendin' cash...
Uh no! not at all. Europeans are very gadget oriented and when I took my ipad1 there last spring, everyone knew about it even if it wasn't available in any market there, except the gray market! They actually warned me to watch out and some offered to buy it from me as high as 1200 Euros.
I certainly know enough people here who wouldn't know the difference either - 'Apple is more expensive, look at this other tablet!' type of thing.
On the phone side (though clearly only having AT&T has been an issue influencing some purchasing decisions), I recently had another parent I know walk up and start asking me what anti-virus I'm running on my phone. Haha. You know, my Droid? Don't you have a Droid? I just laughed.
Anyway, the consumers who don't know the difference will be the ones installing the trojans, running anti-virus on their PCs - oops, I mean tablets now!, and wondering where all the cool apps are.
Based on what they've said, I don't see them paying a dividend anytime soon, and if they do, I'll just accept it on what I already hold.
I just suspect if Apple do any serious spending with the cash, even if they get the best deal in the world, the market will ding the stock.
what happened after MSFT paid a dividend to their whining & complaining shareholders? The stock has been stagnant for the better part of the past decade. Despite being 30+ years old, Apple is a GROWTH company and as such does not pay dividends. Doing such would imply they have run out of better uses for their cash. Not a good message to send to the market. Somebody mentioned how could Apple possibly build enough iPads if they were to become the (sustained) global marketshare leader in tablets? Well, they would need to build capacity - and that takes cash.
Comments
Very astute!
I watched some Xoom demo and they showed, briefly, some primitive video editing software -- my initial thought was Oh-Oh Motorola is tipping their hand that they will supply some "House Apps" to compete with Apple's "House Apps".
Of course, the iMovie preso at the iPad 2 announce put those fears to bed.
But, on reflection, say MMI, Sammy or any of the "Android tab-mfgrs-to-be", wants to differentiate themself by supplying a "House App".
.
Heh, if Samsung and MMI are thinking of offering their own "house apps", I don't think they can come up with a bigger rock to tie to their necks and jump into a lake with. [We can't already match Apple in the hardware department where we at least have some expertise so let's go at them in the software department where we have near-zero expertise.]
A lot of companies think writing software is just a matter of hiring software engineers. If Microsoft, the biggest software company in the world, can't even match Apple in software, what chance do Samsung and Moto have? About as much chance as Sony. (Snigger, snigger, muffled laugh.)
Whatever, this is amazing stuff.
My larger point is, if the market for tablets reaches, say 500M, can Apple ever make close to that many?
Yes, all those idle Android tablet mfg capacity will be making iPads on contract instead. And this is not completely tongue-in-cheek.
Only if Apple rests on its laurels. The thing that concerns me however, if the iPad does indeed go on to dominate the tablety market, is when the cries of "monopoly" will start. Any company that has 80%+ share of a market will surely attract the attention of government stooges. The assumption is that no company can be so good as to dominate a market legally and legitimately. "All corporations are evil" is the anti-business battle cry.
I don't mind Apple having a monopoly. But it depends on how the market is defined. There are people who have been trying to get the MAC declared a monopoly, because it's the only computer system that's a, uh, Mac, and so controls the Mac market.
The only problem with being declared a monopoly, is that it narrows what you can do. It can't be seen as anti-competitive. Otherwise, no big deal. The iPod could be declared a monopoly in the USA, because it's got 73% marketshare, and has for years. But no one's bothered.
MS Office could be declared one as well, because it's got a 95% marketshare in office software, but no one's bothered there either.
Oh, there are some great, and sophisticated apps out there from third parties in all categories. You'd be amazed at some of it.
One of the things that Apple has in its back pocket that no other has is its Pro and Prosumer apps.
While, I don't expect to see Final Cut on the iPad...
I do see iPad apps that interface with Final Cut.
iOS 4.3 contains APIs for all the ProRes codecs that allow fast, efficient editing of HD video.
iOS 4.3 contains many of OS X graphics APIs, e.g. Bezier Curves that are key to CAD, image editing, rotoscoping, image tracking.
I suspect that these APIs were ported to iOS for reasons to be revealed in the coming months.
These are capabilities that Apple and iOS developers can exploit that may never be available on competitive platforms.
If samsung's sell thru for their galaxy tab
Rough trade? I thought my transaction was surprisingly "smooth".
Some people will have very limited uses for a tablet and may choose a different brand if they only wanted to serf the web. Of course that would require someone to release a tablet that is significantly cheaper then the iPad. That was widely predicted a year ago, but it seems that isn't going to materialize. Google is still good enough to be an underdog, but they will continue to have trouble competing with too many offerings on the table. Google tablets will also suffer from supply chain issues related to too many different devices out there. As long as they never stagnate, Apple will stay on top.
It might be interesting if they could do the same to the phone market if they release a lower-end iPhone to compete with the Android market. A superior supply chain coupled with a very good product might allow them to overtake the low-end smartphone market where Android is making large share gains.
Some people have been rooting the Nook Color and putting Android 2.1 to 2.3 on it. One guy even put Honeycomb on, but I don't know how well it works with that.
I have to admit I was surprised when I looked at the teardown for it. It's a better device than I though it was. It's got a Cortex 8, with 512MB RAM, 8GB flash, a gpu, forget which one, an SD slot. So it's not at all that bad. It goes for $250, but some people have found it for $200.
The price may be subsidized though, as it's assumed the Kindle is. If so, it would cost more if sold as a tablet, but I don't know by how much.
Rough trade? I thought my transaction was surprisingly "smooth".
The only roughness with buying my iPad 2 was the 18 different models and 10 different Smart Covers to choose from.
The difference is that Apple has learned from their failure. You can look at the iPod for an example. They are willing to price their products as low as the competition is pricing theirs.
I think apple was prepared to lower the cost of iPad2 if Samsung or Motorola had come out with products that were competitive with the 499. I was ready for a 350 price during Mr Jobs presentation. And because Apple has the supply chain that they did not have with the original Macs, it's ready to challenge anyone with enough cajones to step to the plate.
I wasn't ready for $350. I don't think they could make a profit on that. But they could have lowered the price by just a bit, and it would have cleared out the major makers.
For example, if they could have dropped the price to $479, and the 3G/GPS upgrade to $100, they would have damaged the Xoom pricing beyond repair. The Xoom is $799 for 32Gb and 3/4G, this would have dropped Apple's to $679 for the same configuration, and to $779 for the 64GB model, dropping it below the Xoom.
But Apple might not have been able to do that. They've already stated last year that they're going with lower margins. The new touch screen is supposed to be costing Apple $30 more than the old one, and that would be enough to prevent a price cut.
We can't just cut some arbitrary number off a product's price and assume it can be done.
+1
I think the key post iPad 2 story will be is laptop cannibalization.... I see growth in laptops to drop 50%. Everyone that needs one has one, and all those people who have one don't need another one.
Samsung, Motorola, BB... they aren't fighting for 2nd place, they're fighting for marketplace relevancy.
Apple is the only company that seems to have leadership/growth/dominance/convergance across all those lines.
I think that Apple demonstrated a lot of foresight on the tablet market:
-They recognized that, although Apple can gain market share, the notebook market is saturated. What do people want, to run their Word documents faster?
-They recognized that the "netbook" category, especially those in the 8-11 inch range, don't really provide any sort of quality or experiential difference relative to notebooks. Yet, they covered that section with the MacBook Airs with very little compromise on features.
-They took their time in developing a solid product, both in hardware and software. You can see the difference when you compare this to rushed-out products like the Xoom.
-They got great deals on their suppliers/manufacturers, allowing them to hit the bottom of the price points for once. Usually, people pay a premium.
-They knew that a successful tablet (at least in 2010-2011) would be all touch, no physical keyboard, no rotating hinge, and run mobile software rather than personal computer software. They also provided a top-notch software environment (App Store + 1st party software like Pages).
It's no wonder that Apple has cornered this market. Everyone mocked them last January but once again they are all struggling to catch up now.
Apple once had a tremendous lead in personal computers, now they have 3-4% of a market dominated by Microsoft Windows (92+%). Only a couple of years ago Apple seemed to have a totally insurmountable lead in smartphones, today the IPhone is #3 in the US and #4 in the world, and Android, which nobody took seriously only a year ago, is number one in the world (both in sales and total units in use). Apple is the clear leader in a market which had essentially zero competitors until about a week ago (when the Xoom came out) and it is clear that Motorola pushed the release date earlier then they wanted (Flash won't be working until this Friday and the SD card and 4G even later then that) in order to get in before the IPAd 2). But as more and more Android tablets are released with better specs then the IPad 2 (even the Xoom beats the IPad hardware in virtually every category, and better quad core units are on the way) and almost certainly lower prices, the IPad 2 is going to take a big hit. Remember that Android is free and open and works very well, and even one of those criteria would make Android tablets a serious threat to Apple.
Look Jobs wouldn't continue to harp about how fragmented and silly Android was if he wasn't worried about it. He isn't worried about Windows mobile 7 or RIM, because they suck so bad, but if Android phone and tablet sales continue to increase at their present rate (about 900% in just one year) in a few years Apple will be about as relevant in mobile computing as they are in presently in PCs. I would love to see Apple remain a serious force in mobile computing, but IPods are going to disappear soon (it just doesn't make sense to have a separate device that doesn't do anything that any smartphone can do), Macs are a tiny niche market, Iphones are losing market share rapidly to Android, and there are finally going to be competitors to IPad. If Apple doesn't open their OS to other companies then IOS will whither away, that's just a fact.
No offence, but your analysis and your numbers are all way off. You're talking like it's still 1995. It isn't.
Apple's market share is much closer to 8-9% for starters, and what percentage of the market Apple had in the early days of the computer industry 20 or more years ago is hardly relevant to today's market. If you eliminate the business segments and talk only about consumer computer purchases Apple is close to 25% of the current market and growing at many times the rate of it's competitors.
Channel sales of Android powered handsets are indeed up, but the iPhone is still the most popular phone in the market by a wide margin and picked by consumers many multiple times more than any particular Android phone. iOS as a platform is also surging far ahead of Android, selling far more devices year to year and capturing a bigger slice of the market year by year. iPhone and iOS are both clearly the dominant players in any rational assessment of the facts. Android only "wins" if you engage in the false metrics of comparing all Android handsets to a single iPhone, or comparing them on an OS to OS level, but leaving out all the iOS devices that aren't "phones."
Furthermore, the only Android tablets that are even close to release are niche players. They use 16:9 formats, or a small screen, and aimed at a very specific young, male, "techie" demographic. Many of these are also only available in the USA and won't be sold world-wide as iPad is. The only product I'm even aware of that will seriously compete against the iPad across all markets in all countries and match it feature for feature, is the WebOS tablet from HP that isn't out yet.
Apple not only has the market to itself, it has at least a full year on the competition. They would have to sit still and wait for a year for the rest to catch up, or someone has to leapfrog over them. both seem really unlikely IMO.
The only thing stopping me adding more AAPL at the moment is their huge pile of cash.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a positive thing to hold a decent amount, and I wait with interest to see what they do with it, but it's the sort of thing that no matter what Apple spend it on, the market will probably over-react and send their stock down, and that could represent an opportunity to buy at something of a discount.
Seems to me that Apple have already demonstrated what they are spending their money on ... a huge data center and a policy of buying up massive quantities of parts/components for their devices. The smart thing about that is it benefits Apple in two ways ... adds to their sales/bottom line and freezes out their competition. Give me a company with no debt and a ton of $$$$$ anytime.
hope the "old days" of lack of inventory while others catch up won't affect future sales perhaps people will just accept as in the last many introductions, "sell out" and stay loyal
i would
but apple must respond quickly to inventory issues
also is apple facing a fragmentation issue, with all the combinations available
i wonder if there is a stat for which are the most popular #1 #2 #3
i also wonder how many were just bought to sell on ebay or europe
You bring up a very good point -- all the different SKUs of the iPad and iPhone.
It is so unlike Apple to offer multiple, overlapping products.
I was surprised that Apple offered a CDMA iP4 instead of a combined GSM/CDMA world phone.
I was even more surprised that they did the same thing with the iPad 2.
We know, from what Tim Cook has said, that Apple plans to offer world iDevices -- just that currently there are too many sacrifices (cost, availability, battery).
The old Apple would have done nothing -- or waited until it became practical.
The fact that, color aside, Apple doubled their SKUs -- tells me that they plan to "own" the tablet market and gain the market share lead in the smart phone market.
They are willing to sacrifice interchangeability/universality and create manufacturing/distribution problems to attain these ends.
I do believe that Apple is serious... very serious!
.
Apple not only has the market to itself, it has at least a full year on the competition. They would have to sit still and wait for a year for the rest to catch up, or someone has to leapfrog over them. both seem really unlikely IMO.
That assumes that Android Tablets are equal to the original iPad. Hardware spec-wise, yes they surpass, but not overall experience or "polish." Therefore, the iPad is certainly MORE than 1 year ahead of the competition.
Food for thought:
When Apple launched the iPhone (Jan 2007), Steve Jobs said it was 5 years ahead of the competition. Well, a bit over 4 years later and I still don't anything as widely "finished" or "polished" as iOS - Android included. Keep in mind that iOS has not fundamentally changed since launch (incremental feature updates along the way, of course). But the core OS is the same, and it trumps all competitors to this day. The closest I would say would actually be WinPhone 7, due to MSFT's (relatively) tight grip on hardware specs and end-user experience. But that just came out in October, nearly 4 years after the iPhone was debuted, and lacks many features users want.
Wouldn't it be just terrible for you if Apple declares a one time dividend of $30 per share as of some time of record for share ownership, and you were still dithering over their cash?
Based on what they've said, I don't see them paying a dividend anytime soon, and if they do, I'll just accept it on what I already hold.
I just suspect if Apple do any serious spending with the cash, even if they get the best deal in the world, the market will ding the stock.
Actually, there was a brief period when the Apple II line bested the TRS-80 (the king of the hill at the time); alas, the IBM PC came out shortly after that and the rest, as they say, is history.
TRS-80?
Are you "Trash Talking?"
... take out the papers and the trash -- or you don't get no spendin' cash...
Yakkity-Yack -- don't talk back!
1) If you are Apple -- the more you do, the aheader you get!
2) If you are an Android tab mfgr. -- the more you do, the behinder you get!
.
You make some good points, however with aheader and behinder, I'd like to specifically congratulate you on your brilliantly poor English!!!!
Uh no! not at all. Europeans are very gadget oriented and when I took my ipad1 there last spring, everyone knew about it even if it wasn't available in any market there, except the gray market! They actually warned me to watch out and some offered to buy it from me as high as 1200 Euros.
I certainly know enough people here who wouldn't know the difference either - 'Apple is more expensive, look at this other tablet!' type of thing.
On the phone side (though clearly only having AT&T has been an issue influencing some purchasing decisions), I recently had another parent I know walk up and start asking me what anti-virus I'm running on my phone. Haha. You know, my Droid? Don't you have a Droid? I just laughed.
Anyway, the consumers who don't know the difference will be the ones installing the trojans, running anti-virus on their PCs - oops, I mean tablets now!, and wondering where all the cool apps are.
Based on what they've said, I don't see them paying a dividend anytime soon, and if they do, I'll just accept it on what I already hold.
I just suspect if Apple do any serious spending with the cash, even if they get the best deal in the world, the market will ding the stock.
what happened after MSFT paid a dividend to their whining & complaining shareholders? The stock has been stagnant for the better part of the past decade. Despite being 30+ years old, Apple is a GROWTH company and as such does not pay dividends. Doing such would imply they have run out of better uses for their cash. Not a good message to send to the market. Somebody mentioned how could Apple possibly build enough iPads if they were to become the (sustained) global marketshare leader in tablets? Well, they would need to build capacity - and that takes cash.