Apple's iPad shipments could hit new low in first quarter - report

AppleInsider

The downward trend in iPad sales is expected to continue through the first quarter of this year, with at least one firm expecting Apple to ship just 9.8 million tablets in the period.

Despite the potential slip -- which would represent a 20 percent year-over-year decline -- Apple would still hold 21 percent of the market, according to DigiTimes Research. Samsung is expected to come second with 14 percent.

The lion's share of shipments would belong to 7-inch tablets, the publication believes, with 7.9-inch devices like the iPad mini making up 14 percent. Those with displays above 11 inches, including the iPad Pro, would take 11 percent.

Those numbers match up well with predictions from other sources, including oft-correct analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities.

Kuo expects Apple to ship between 40 and 42 million iPads in 2016, a decline of 16 percent year-over-year. Revenues would remain strong, he expects, thanks to increased average sale prices from the iPad Pro.

Last month, Apple reported sales of 16.1 million iPads over the holidays. That was a sharp 25 percent yearly decline, but CFO Luca Maestri noted that Apple maintains a solid grip on the U.S. tablet market with an 85 percent share.

mac_128

Combined with this report, there might actually be something to Apple announcing an iPad Air 3 with Pencil support, whereas I would have said that's at least a year away while they use it as a selling point to boost Pro sales. Likewise with 3D-Touch. 

Though that's still far from an event headliner, especially in light of these sales numbers. However, maybe that's the plan, keep people talking about the iPad. On the other hand, releasing that updated iPad closer to the holidays would probably result in more sales.

mcfrazieriv

No sh!t sherlock! Jobs introduced a product and his successor gave almost zero market reason to buy into the dang thing so the market fizzled out. Every time Jobs introduced a product, he introduced it to disrupt a whole industry. Tim Cook doesn't have the vision for this, he just knows how to make millions of them with a high margin. Jobs was known for extreme interest in the education market, once calling schools "fortune 500 companies" at a NeXT product launch. There's been almost nothing but failed deals with Tim Cook's leadership in education, one of which being a massive "scandal" with the LAUSD and another the eBooks garbage probably left unfinished by Jobs. Yes, it's annoying to point out how life was different with Jobs, but damn it's as glaring as those damn blue polo shirts with embroidered white Apples.

dws-2

I have the first iPad Mini Retina, and while I like it, I use it for web browsing and reading Kindle and Instapaper stuff, so I don't see myself upgrading anytime soon. I think a lot of people use their iPads, but so far there just don't seem to be good reasons to upgrade. Also, I use my iPhone probably 10x more than my iPad, so while the iPhone gets upgraded by default every year, the iPad is only upgraded if there's a really good reason. Eventually, if the iPad became a computer replacement for me, I could see upgrading more often, but as a programmer that seems like a REALLY long ways off.

sflocal

mcfrazieriv said:

No sh!t sherlock! Jobs introduced a product and his successor gave almost zero market reason to buy into the dang thing so the market fizzled out. Every time Jobs introduced a product, he introduced it to disrupt a whole industry. Tim Cook doesn't have the vision for this, he just knows how to make millions of them with a high margin. Jobs was known for extreme interest in the education market, once calling schools "fortune 500 companies" at a NeXT product launch. There's been almost nothing but failed deals with Tim Cook's leadership in education, one of which being a massive "scandal" with the LAUSD and another the eBooks garbage probably left unfinished by Jobs. Yes, it's annoying to point out how life was different with Jobs, but damn it's as glaring as those damn blue polo shirts with embroidered white Apples.

And then you woke up.  

I believe times are different between what Jobs had to contend with versus Tim  Cook.  When Steve did something, he didn't really have to contend with the other players as much pumping out so much crap so fast and flood the market.  That happened much later for him, especially when Samsung / Android got into the game.  Tim Cook had to contend with that day one when he officially became CEO when Steve died.  I really believe that Steve was the greatest tech-visionaries of our lifetime, but that being said I think if he were still alive now his ability to disrupt the market like he did with the Mac, iOS would be much, much smaller.  I think Apple's stock would have taken more of a beating simply because people were already whining back then that Steve Jobs was "losing his mojo" and couldn't think stuff up to compete against the Android sh!t.

Tim Cook is doing an amazing job.  Period.  He has a fantastic team.  It needs work, like any group always needs.  It's far better than most shops anyways.

Even with the iPad selling less than ever, it's being replaced (cannibalized) by the bigger iPhones.  I know by experienced that when I got my iP6+, I essentially stopped using my iPad and have zero desire to get another one.  It's not a bad thing because Apple kept me as a customer to buy their next iPhone.  That's how Apple works.  They keep making great stuff to keep the consumer coming back, and with pleasure!  

The number of iPads beings sold per quarter may be low, but I can pretty much guarantee that any company (i.e. Scamscum) would KILL to have those kind of sales every quarter of their garbage.

I think the iPad is now evolving into its own market segment where it really comes in handy.  Not just as a PC-replacement for those that have very basic needs, but also in the corporate environment.  Just look at how iPads are being used the commercial airline community.  Perhaps you missed the recent article about a german power firm buying 1,000 iPads for their staff?

Apple is also making a killing in the ecosystem sector as well.  Apple is doing just fine under the direction of Tim Cook.  He's a great captain for the ship, unless you prefer to listen to Sog's whining.

josu

I don't see where's the news here. A new model a month away, and the most popular one, so is easy to see a big slowdown in sales, even if the Pro keep selling at a million a month rate as the previous quarter, the volume isn't there. It's in the Air, and there's no reason to buy one of those with the new model not far away.

I will upgrade the moment the new model become available. The iPad 2, the model with the largest installed base as far as I know, is totally obsolete right now, mine is slow, some pages in safari don't work properly. just yesterday I bookmarked an article linked from Daring Firewall, I tried three times to upload it, and didn't worked. I tried in my 6th gen iPod Touch and loaded fast and perfectly well, with the pictures and all. SO IMHO, there are reasons to upgrade right now, at least from the people using the iPad 2. is heavy, the screen is not retina and its getting really obsolete.

schlack

iPads are amazing but the market is saturated and the upgrade cycle is slower than with iPhones. I plan to upgrade my iPad Air to an iPad Air 3 assuming the it has the rumored features. Still...I can easily see how someone will go more than 2 generations between upgrading.

brucemc

Just coming up on 6 years since the iPad introduction.  While we live in a world where everyone's attention span keeps getting smaller, the fact is that changes to industry / business tools, adoption curves, etc - all change more slowly that perception of what it should be.  After 6 years of the PC introduction, no one could say how many units would ship in years to come, or what the changes it would bring to different segments.  The same is true of iPad.  Some use cases pop up right away, while others take years to appear.  

iPad has the potential to change the tools that many in business use - where a PC might have been the "only" tool, now there is a choice of smart phone, tablet, or PC (or all of these for a subset).  For those who write code, live in spreadsheets, or create documentation - clearly the iPad is at best a supplementary tool.  But for those in mobile or field professions - anywhere you are moving a bit or interfacing with customers - the tablet may be the best of the mobile & computing worlds.  We read about businesses all the time deploying iPads in these cases.  Adding Pencil support across the lineup over time will increase the usefulness in many areas beyond "artists".

From a volume perspective, iPad will always remain well behind the iPhone, but that doesn't mean that its adoption / installed base won't grow & from that you get a reasonable business of some newcomers + mostly upgrades over time, as the PC industry has. This is likely why Tim is indicating that iPad will start to grow again later this year.

mike1

Will be replacing an iPad2 with an "Air3" as soon as I can give them my credit card #.

dewme

The only thing that's "holding back" the iPad is the fact that it hit the mark so incredibly well right out of the gate. Sure, it's still ripe for continuous subtle refinements and performance tweaks but how much can it really change within the pure form factor that it delivers? Faster, thinner, lighter, better screen, more memory, more sensors, more widespread integration with other connected devices, waterproof, snow proof, longer battery life, pink/rose gold leopard skin chassis,  ... sure, but where does it go from there? Foldable? Infinite run time? It does what it does extremely well and is limited only by the imagination of app developers. 

Compare the original personal computers from the 70s with the latest 5K iMacs. Or the original mobile phones with the latest iPhone 6s. If the iPad 1 was generationally equivalent to a Sinclair ZX80 then what's the future iPad equivalent that delivers as great of a relative delta in improvements that the latest iMac delivers over the old knuckle dragging Sinclair? I see the iPad being as fundamental to personal computing as the wheel is to transportation, at least until hovercraft become the norm. 

That being said, I still won't buy an iPad Pro until they offer a 256 GB or larger model, preferably 512 GB. With all my 128 GB devices withering down to less than 5 GB free storage I need to have more onboard storage to feel that I'm taking enough of a bump to justify the purchase. It may be silly but it's really that simple of a decision. 

tonghi

What's keeping people from upgrading their iPad?
Well, it's simple it's got the same storage and when it was released in 2010. 16gb. That's right. $499 got an iPad with 16gb of storage in 2010. Fast forward 6 years, 2016 the iPad Air 2 is still $499 for 16gb. In six years iPad has never been upgraded!!!
What is Apple thinking? How the hell do you expect people to buy a new iPad that has the same painfully limited 16gb of storage? Yes, there are retina screens, faster processors, thinner and lighter etc. But the fact remains, when clicking the BUY button on the Apple Store, a buyer is faced with 3 choices only. Color, Storage, and Wi-Fi/Cellular. So if someone has an iPad that's full of apps/media and wants a new one, when they go shopping they learn that they have to spend more than $499 to get more than the measly 16gb of storage. Obviously, some people do that, but the mass of people really just want to get more storage for the base price. For god's sake, you can get a 32gb flash drive for under $10 on Amazon and a 128gb for $30!!! Yes, we know that the flash storage in the iPad is better and faster, but the general perception is the iPad with 16gb of storage is overpriced and the upgrades to 64gb and 128gb are overpriced too.

Apple needs to get back to what made the iPad great, which was giving amazing value. iPads need to start at 64gb with 128gb and 256gb the upgrades. Then you will see an uptick in iPad sales. Yes, they went part way with the iPad Pro at 32gb and 128gb, but that should have been 64gb and 256gb. 

Everyone I know with an iPad has to go through the process of deleting Apps and Media in a regular cycle just so that can buy new Apps and download new media. That just does not make for a good experience...

williamlondon

schlack said:

iPads are amazing but the market is saturated and the upgrade cycle is slower than with iPhones. I plan to upgrade my iPad Air to an iPad Air 3 assuming the it has the rumored features. Still...I can easily see how someone will go more than 2 generations between upgrading.

Ditto here, I'll also be upgrading my lovely iPad Air to an Air 3 when it's released, assuming it's feature rich as we're expecting. The difference between the Air and Air 2 were so minimal that it didn't make any sense (for me), just as it doesn't make much sense yet to upgrade from the mini 2 to the current mini (though I admit I am tempted). These products are maturing to the point there just isn't as much big technological progress to be made with these devices, they are so fast, they do so much already, they last longer in utility than they used to, the replacement cycle becomes longer, it's just natural and expected as normal in the product life cycle.

That said, the article states the quarter could be *just* 9.8M units. "Just." "JUST!" 9.8M units in one quarter is what Microsoft would love to achieve with it's "super duper successful amazing product" that wowed every tech writer and Apple-hater alike so much so that 9.8M units in one quarter for Microsoft would be an astronomical increase compared to where they are today, but for Apple to "just" sell 9.8M units is abysmal, a total failure on the part of Tim Cook to mismanage a company so badly that a quarter "just" achieved sales of 9.8M units of one of its products.

Is anyone else baffled by the double standards out there as much as I am?

evilution

Hold the front page! A device released 16 months ago doesn't sell as well as it did when it was originally released!
Who'd have guessed that!

However, in that time, no other product has come close to it.

cornchip

dewme said:

The only thing that's "holding back" the iPad is the fact that it hit the mark so incredibly well right out of the gate. Sure, it's still ripe for continuous subtle refinements and performance tweaks but how much can it really change within the pure form factor that it delivers? Faster, thinner, lighter, better screen, more memory, more sensors, more widespread integration with other connected devices, waterproof, snow proof, longer battery life, pink/rose gold leopard skin chassis,  ... sure, but where does it go from there? Foldable? Infinite run time? It does what it does extremely well and is limited only by the imagination of app developers. 

Compare the original personal computers from the 70s with the latest 5K iMacs. Or the original mobile phones with the latest iPhone 6s. If the iPad 1 was generationally equivalent to a Sinclair ZX80 then what's the future iPad equivalent that delivers as great of a relative delta in improvements that the latest iMac delivers over the old knuckle dragging Sinclair? I see the iPad being as fundamental to personal computing as the wheel is to transportation, at least until hovercraft become the norm. 

That being said, I still won't buy an iPad Pro until they offer a 256 GB or larger model, preferably 512 GB. With all my 128 GB devices withering down to less than 5 GB free storage I need to have more onboard storage to feel that I'm taking enough of a bump to justify the purchase. It may be silly but it's really that simple of a decision. 

Excellent post. Agree with a lot of it. I could probably do without that much storage on an iPad though. The only thing holding me back from upgrading now is $$$. I may opt to grab a first gen air to tide me over, although pen support would be very hard to resist.

cornchip

williamlondon said:

schlack said:

iPads are amazing but the market is saturated and the upgrade cycle is slower than with iPhones. I plan to upgrade my iPad Air to an iPad Air 3 assuming the it has the rumored features. Still...I can easily see how someone will go more than 2 generations between upgrading.

Ditto here, I'll also be upgrading my lovely iPad Air to an Air 3 when it's released, assuming it's feature rich as we're expecting. The difference between the Air and Air 2 were so minimal that it didn't make any sense (for me), just as it doesn't make much sense yet to upgrade from the mini 2 to the current mini (though I admit I am tempted). These products are maturing to the point there just isn't as much big technological progress to be made with these devices, they are so fast, they do so much already, they last longer in utility than they used to, the replacement cycle becomes longer, it's just natural and expected as normal in the product life cycle.

That said, the article states the quarter could be *just* 9.8M units. "Just." "JUST!" 9.8M units in one quarter is what Microsoft would love to achieve with it's "super duper successful amazing product" that wowed every tech writer and Apple-hater alike so much so that 9.8M units in one quarter for Microsoft would be an astronomical increase compared to where they are today, but for Apple to "just" sell 9.8M units is abysmal, a total failure on the part of Tim Cook to mismanage a company so badly that a quarter "just" achieved sales of 9.8M units of one of its products.

Is anyone else baffled by the double standards out there as much as I am?

So so so true. It's baffling to think about.

vision33r

Tim Cook has not created any new partnerships or disrupt an industry.  He's allowed Google to over take Apple in Market Cap because Google has played their game well and not been opposed or disrupted by any Apple announcement.  

Apple under Tim Cook only knows how to produce something cheap while offering very little feature gains over previous gens.  Apple also have taken a back seat to inventing ideas instead they turn to acquisitions or lazy way of buying ideas like Beats.  Why can't Apple reinvent the headphones?

Apple TV looks like another failed idea because Apple wants upfront profits from the networks and they say "No thanks."  

Apple Music has only made Spotify to gain even more subscribers.  The Watch is another failed launch, if they made the Watch a standalone no iPhone necessary device than it can work.  Now Fitbit and other companies will keep selling because they don't need a smartphone to work.

williamlondon

vision33r said:

Tim Cook has not created any new partnerships or disrupt an industry.  He's allowed Google to over take Apple in Market Cap because Google has played their game well and not been opposed or disrupted by any Apple announcement.  

Apple under Tim Cook only knows how to produce something cheap while offering very little feature gains over previous gens.  Apple also have taken a back seat to inventing ideas instead they turn to acquisitions or lazy way of buying ideas like Beats.  Why can't Apple reinvent the headphones?

Apple TV looks like another failed idea because Apple wants upfront profits from the networks and they say "No thanks."  

Apple Music has only made Spotify to gain even more subscribers.  The Watch is another failed launch, if they made the Watch a standalone no iPhone necessary device than it can work.  Now Fitbit and other companies will keep selling because they don't need a smartphone to work.

Oh ffs, not this same old shit again.