Apple announces 3M sales of iPad mini, fourth-gen iPad - Page 2

I'm guessing 2 million minis and 1 million iPad 4. Also I think the iPad 4 were is short supply as well as the minis. One poster here over the weekend said there were no iPad 4 on display at his Apple Store. 

 

I would go with the theory of Apple not providing the competition with valuable inside info. My guess is the mini sold 2M with 1M of the new iPad 4, simply based on price points.

 

Tim is still the master of supply chain logistics. Double the sales/shipments (therefore production) in 6 months with a completely new product thrown in...without even counting the totally redesigned iP5 ramp!

 

No other company on earth could have pulled all this off in these volumes...including Samscum!

 

Great Job!

Considering they only had 950k going to stores....thats a pretty safe bet. Maybe read the article?...

 

The Mini is the first reactionary product I've seen from Apple. You may think they're all a joke, and I agree they're not up to same standard, but if that were true Apple wouldn't have released it in the first place. As has been discussed here, it's been killed internally at Apple a few times in the past. Apple's hedging against what they view as potential competition before it turns serious. 

Who's saying it was a flop?? (answer: No one)

 

Making that claim would imply no one really wanted them instead of there weren't many available to buy. Don't inject strawmen as it makes it difficult to have a reasoned discussion.

Perspective: MS sold 4 million copies of Window 8 at $40 in 3 days which has no limit on how many people can buy the software and hadn't had a major revision in 3 years, whereas Apple sold 3 million units of a limited and sold out HW product ranging from $329 to $529 that is being sold right in the middle of pretty much every one of their HW products being updated.

Yes, yes, I know these aren't directly comparable but historically SW is much easier to sell than HW in higher volumes, just as digital copies are much easier than physical copies, and significantly lower prices are much easier to attract buyers than higher prices. It wasn't too long ago that such a thing would have been unheard of between Apple and MS.

That seems to be your implication as to why Apple didn't give an exact number of iPad mini unit sales that exclude the iPad (4) unit sales.

Mmmm. Dunno.

 

If it were a reactionary product it would be half the price and made of plastic. Remember the pundits who were predicting a starting price of $199?

 

This is a high end product built and priced accordingly. It's the same Apple strategy we've been seeing for years: watch the competition, note their mistakes, build something profitable and better. That's not reactionary; that's strategy.

 

Oh, and lots of products get killed internally, or revised until they're good enough to be released.

Edited by Rayz - 11/5/12 at 7:16am

I suppose if you want to make something up rather than read and comment on what I actually wrote beginning with my very first post in this thread. Of course you'd have less to try and discredit my opinion with then, so I can understand why you might "feel the need" to misdirect.

"IMHO Apple declining to state weekend sales for the Mini is probably an indication there just weren't very many to sell (rather than no one wanted them). Not Apple-like to avoid announcing product launch figures if they're good. My completely uneducated guess is that fewer than 1M Mini's went home with new owners."

I stand by what I wrote. Regardless of whether you think it's because of lack of buyer interest rather than poor production assuming less than 1 million units is saying it's a flop. Let's remember it's been at least 2 months since we've seen iPad mini leaks that turned out to be legit. That tells me they started ramping up production back then so less than 1 million units produces is tantamount to saying Tim Cook fucked up in the one area that he absolutely no equal.

That is also suggesting they sold 2 million iPad (4)s and yet the iPad mini was so prominent in my store. Let's also remember that it was released in a record breaking 34 countries on the same day. If the number of units were so low you'd think they would have scaled it back to just a few countries like most releases. As it stands that is less than 28k iPad minis per country.

It's a new product with a new level or portability and lowered cost. Even if it's a flop it will still appeal to many early adopters. The iPad (4) not so much. Even Windows Vista had awesome sales out of the gate.

These statements your are making are not true. The iPod nano and shuffle are reactionary products.

I would say he was being sarcastic.

 

To what?

 

Easy.  

 

- Apple didn't break out sales of which unit sold how many

- therefore iPad mini sold more units than iPad 4

- therefore iPad isn't popular anymore

- So ... panic!!!

translation: when google and Amazon say they are selling like hot cakes you believe it. When Apple says it is almost selling lot of a product you don't like, it must not be true.

This is surprising, i have one IPad 4 in those 3M count. :)

I wonder how many people bought an iPad v3 over the weekend from uninformed sales people.
 

the plethora of miniature mp3 players that came out before these did...from companies like sony.

But Apple never said that they wouldn't make a music player that small.

 

If somebody's tight on money, the iPad 3's that Apple were selling for $379 is a good buy, IMO.

 

I don't recall Apple saying they wouldn't make an iPad mini.

I ordered 2 Minis for my kids as Christmas presents. I took the family to the Apple Store (we have a fairly large one here) and the store was packed. You couldn't get near the iPad Mini tables to play with one as there was a line-up to try them. My kids went straight the the "regular" iPad tables and stayed there for 10 minutes playing without a complaint from anyone waiting to see one.

 

This was on Saturday, late afternoon. Out of curiosity I asked about Minis and they said they were completely sold out on Friday. I asked about the iPad 4 and they still had stock, though a couple specific models were out. I picked up a new iPad '4' while I was there.

 

At my local community "forum" (20,000 members) a lot of people bought Minis and I was the first to post I bought an iPad '4'.

 

This is just my experience, but I think it's ridiculous to imply that Apple didn't sell a ton of Minis compared to the iPad 2 or '4'.

 

A good buy, yes, but if you went home with what you thought was the latest and greatest only to find out that a new product was introduced...

"... fewer than 1M went home to consumers" or something close to that.

 

That would be considered a flop.  So at least you are saying "flop".

 

My guess is the numbers are closer to 2M for iPad mini and 1M for 4th gen iPad.  Based on the shere number of people playing with them at the Apple stores compared to the 4th gen, the interest was very high and if Apple can ramp up to 5 million iPhone 5's for opening weekend.....  Yea....

This is true, selling high priced Hardware in competitive market is much bigger achievement than selling S/W upgrade in the market where there is no competition.
 

 

Again, you're mistaking 'reactionary' with 'letting the competition make the mistakes.'

Oh, you mean like if somebody walked into a best buy and they got sold an iPad 3 for the same price as the iPad 4, believing it was the newest? Yeah, I can agree with that.

theyve said they wouldnt do a lot of things theyve done. That doesnt matter. That stuff is what you call marketing. I wanted a 7 inch tablet even before steve jobs made that comment and I knew apple was going to release one. They were just trying to throw competitors off the trail and protect their current product.

There's absolutely no reason NOT to believe Apple when they say they sold 3M iPads. You're trying to put a strawman in play too.

i agree. But I was pointing out other instances where apple was responding to what the market wanted vs telling the market what it wanted.

Did SJ not say that 10" is the minimum size for tablet apps?

no im not. You want to make statements that arent based on the facts and people are simply challenging you on them.

Or bought an iPad2 instead of an iPad, getting the crazy idea that "2" would mean it's the newer model.

 

I think you and SolipsismX are twisting things around so much to explain why they didn't announce iPad mini sales numbers that you are practically saying the same thing as those you are arguing against.  

 

Sure, Apple doesn't break out particular models from a product category when reporting sales, but as you yourself admit above, they do announce sales for a particular product like the iPhone 5, (and here is the part you left out... ) when it's new. 

 

This is when they announce individual sales figures for a product, when it's new and when it's first released.  

 

There is a long standing pattern of Apple releasing a new product and then announcing that said new product is doing well by releasing the sales figures of said product in it's first week, weekend or other appropriate measure of sales time.  This is an unusual situation of releasing two products at the same time, but still we have every reason to expect that Apple would release the sales figures of the new iPad mini.  It's the information that everyone wants to hear and everyone expects to hear.  

 

The fact that they (seemingly) purposefully haven't done this, is in fact unusual.  

What's facts did I misstate?

Again, he never stated that.

The only reason he was asked about a smaller tablet is because that's exactly the trail competitors were on, and who the hell are you that you know exactly what Apple's motives are for anything?

Oh yes he did, I'll search for a link.

http://m.guardiannews.com/technology/2012/oct/22/ipad-mini-steve-jobs-7in-tablets?cat=technology&type=article

...and based on available information ahead of the launch at least semi-reputable sources said their was going to be fewer than 1 million available for sale launch weekend. If you can't supply product to meet demand that doesn't make it a flop in my view, but apparently would in yours. I suppose going by your interpretation the iPhone 5 was also a flop since they didn't have sufficient stock at launch?

Other commenters in this very thread are already putting a negative spin on it. The analysts will find a way too. Just wait a few minutes.