the problem is this and i will sound like a broken record: ipads need i/o. at first i wanted the ipad pro for the real estate because, yes, i do serious work with: creative art and music output & office-type tasks. but the more i think about it, what is the ipad pro gonna be? a blown up ipad with all the pain in the ass data jungling that goes with it. how so? lemme see here: i can't share photos, word/pages/pdf documents, audio files, art files...ANY kinda of files unless there is wifi/cell connection and i use drop box...or go home because my computer has to be the one that recognizes the device in itunes and then get tethered up for itunes sharing to myself...WHAT A PAIN IN THE ASS. sorry people, Dropbox, or other cloud based services, don't work as expected in every corner of the world (as in my experience is the middle kingdom...or, as i call it, "5000 years of history...and who exactly are you kidding outside of CCTV...coulda fooled me" after all is said and done, i'd like to simply plug in a usb drive or sd card, drag and drop the files of my choosing onto it, and put it on any computer, anywhere, with anyone. oh yeah, also how about REAL multitasking? no, not this open one app, then hide it, then open the other app...back and forth, back and forth...B.S. yeah, yeah, yeah iOS 9 is goona address this i hear...after all these versions we are granted this ability...thank you my lord (as i bow my head in gratitude) lets see here...the Surface Pro, on its third try, is coming into fruition: Microsoft seriously stuck to theor guns and listened to the ENDUSER...the people who matter at the end of the day. the Surface Oro has all the things one could want in a portable, powerful desktop/laptop replacement realized (other than not being able to upgrade past 8 gigs of RAM from what i understand...yeah i spec'd it out for shits and giggles) and it comes into the price range of the MacBook Pro (the BEST period because it comes with OSX and Logic Pro is exclusive to Apple...both without a doubt the BEST in their respective class). anyway the Surfae Pro is still a Windows machine: same driver BS, same user interface clunkiness (isn't that why we jump ship to the elegant Apple OS and machines to begin with?) hey, i've got two ipad 1, two ipad 2, one ipad 3, one ipad 4 (kind of a mistake but i got it for the lightning connection...ok, ok i cavedin just because of that...pathetic i know), one ipad air 2 (which i LOVE LOVE LOVE) Just make a device that addresses the issues of i/o and multitasking i has bellyached about above and onie might see sales of Apple tablets go into high gear again...shit, make the tablet run a real operating system and shit will be crazy. that's actually the other thing: lately, i haev REALLY been wanting to do serious work in my music making: using the softsynths i like within the daw that i like (don't worry corporate types: stick cotton in your ears) no matter were i am...shit, no, i can't do that...i have a tablet with me ALL the time and pretty much ALL the apps are at the end of e day are stupid little things that pass the time...productivity runs smack into a brickwall. APPLE LISTEN: Make SURFACE PRO KILLER.
If Phil Schiller thinks he can upsell people to an iPad "pro" then I can totally see Apple not updating the iPad Air this year. Phil's all about the upsell.
The only weird thing is then the mini and the Air would have the same processor again. So would they both get a processor bump in 2016? Or just the Air gets updated and not the mini?
This advice is solid gold. What better way to deal with declining interest and competition from larger phones than to stop innovating the iPad for a year and allow it's hardware and features to fall well behind larger phones? Brilliant.
If Phil Schiller thinks he can upsell people to an iPad "pro" then I can totally see Apple not updating the iPad Air this year. Phil's all about the upsell.
The only weird thing is then the mini and the Air would have the same processor again. So would they both get a processor bump in 2016? Or just the Air gets updated and not the mini?
If apple wants to get their sales going again, they could start the price of the iPad Pro at $499 and then drop the price of the iPad Air and iPad Mini by $100. I'm sure they would move again.
Well, at least there's quality competition in the Surface tablets, if Apple's just going to let the lineup stagnate. The logic of "oh the upgrade cycle" is bogus; people don't buy Macs every two years but Apple does both yearly and in some cases twice a year upgrades with them.
Apple's laptop redesigns are at this point quite infrequent. The upgrades are generally just replacing the processor and perhaps increasing default memory. Since laptops are running relatively sophisticated applications, keeping the laptop internals up-to-date and competitive is something Apple has to do. Frankly, they don't do that enough. iPads just aren't running the kinds of apps, or multitasking between apps, enough to need their CPUs and memory configurations to be upgraded frequently. A four-year-old iPad is indeed fine for almost everything iPads are used for. Particularly in the pro and photo/video hobbyist market that laptops need to keep up with, that frequently isn't the case.
Also, replacing one Intel CPU with a better one that fits in the same socket, or replacing memory DIMMs with double-capacity memory DIMMs is a no brainer.
The larger problem on the laptop side (well, not a problem for us consumers) is the wide variety of target markets that Apple still caters to. The ultra-light, the light but not too big, the cutting-edge weight-reducing design experiments, and the high end video workhorse are all different markets that require different internals to match their weight and power requirements. iPads don't have an equivalently complex differentiated market, though we'll see if the iPad Pro starts a trend toward that. Apple even keeps the old non-retina Macbook Pro going for those who want to be able to replace hard drives and upgrade memory every year, and to run with an internal DVD drive. But, they are only upgrading the CPU and memory configurations on those. I presume they will continue making the regular Macbook Pro until they simply run out of factory capacity, since their margin must be quite high given the lack of redesign investment. Though I guess they can always make more of them to sit on shelves when their factories aren't busy making anything else.
Apple is much better off not selling the Mini and having people choose either the 6+ or regular iPad instead.
You can say the same about the other iPads though. The entry level models are not much more expensive than the mini. Why would say a $75 net profit be much better than $50 if you lose 1/3-1/2 of the unit volume? The iPad ASP is $415 so a significant number sold are $399 or under. If you make the entry level $399 then will people automatically move from the $299 tier to $399 or just migrate to a $99-299 Android tablet or upgrade even less often? Tablets are lower importance than phones and PCs and phablets are no good for movies, books, long browsing sessions. If they were, Apple would not have avoided making a 7" tablet; the minimum they felt usable for tablet use was an 8" 4:3 screen size. The iPad mini is ideal for kids using. There's no way they'd get a $750 phablet to play with.
Look at this guy trying to use an iPhone 6 Plus for typing a document on:
[VIDEO]
For certain scenarios like a very mobile blogger that doesn't want to carry a bag, it has its advantages but there's no way that most users who do prolonged browsing sessions, heavy document editing, movie editing, photo editing will substitute any iPad for a phablet. The mini hits a very desirable price point for people that don't want a phone contract.
The iPhone is always coming out with things that compel people to upgrade. A better camera will always get a group of people upgrading but this doesn't matter on the iPad. Apple Pay is a good feature but you're not likely going to haul an iPad into a store to pay for things at a terminal. The iPad has a big screen already so a bigger one is not going to make a significant difference to how you use it.
People like new experiences so adding a new way to interact with the iPad with gestures and tactile feedback would be compelling to some people. If they'd blocked iOS 9 from some older devices, that would have shifted more hardware but it's frustrating to be on the receiving end of this.
They sell about 60-70 million iPads per year. Cutting out the mini would potentially lose them about 1/3-1/2 of their units. It might raise the margins but at a significant cost in the volume of people paying for services like the App Store, accessories etc. Any loss to Android or Surface can potentially mean someone decides to move other products like their phones too. Lowering the price of the Air could offset the volume loss but then it hits the margins again and it's not going to be made up by pushing people into buying a phablet, which isn't a replacement for people who want a proper tablet experience, just for people who would occasionally use a tablet and don't mind having an uncomfortably sized phone all of the time.
If the upgrade cycle for the iPad is 3-5 years then unique buyers would be about 200-300 million. PCs seem to be in use by about 1.5-2 billion and just over 300m sold per year. That's roughly a 5 year upgrade cycle and it means about 1 in 5 people who own a PC own an iPad.
I think Apple's big sell with the iPad is to replace limited-use PCs with a limited device. Microsoft's route with Surface is closer to the netbook route (full featured, low performance, poor user experience) and the iPad so far has been more successful.
Maybe Apple has hit the 20-25% of limited-use PC owners already (and a similar amount use alternative tablets) and the rest need or think they need the full PC experience.
If they think they can grow the sales volume more, they need to figure out what those limited-use PC users are doing with their computers that they won't give up, try to offer that capability and market it to them. Steam apparently has 125 million active users so PC games could play a role but not necessarily the bigger titles.
Weak upgrades from one model to another certainly aren't going to convince people to upgrade. Adding touch id to the iPad mini 2 and calling it version 3 isn't going to get many mini 2 owners to buy the new one. Getting a new GPU will be good for gamers, maybe the same anti-reflective coating on the Air.
Company wide overhead rate is 20% ( 50 Billion revenue, 10 billion in overhead)
Even if we cut that rate in HALF (which is crazy) the Mini still makes horrible margins at 10% overhead.
$400 price
$100 gross margin
$40 overhead
$60 profit
Hell, lets even make believe the Mini had no overhead expense except Corporate tax of 25%
$400 price
$100 gross margin
$25 overhead
$75 profit
That is the absolute minimum expense with ZERO overhead except tax. So we know for SURE the profit is below $75 and probably closer to $50. Now lets look at your typical iPhone6+
$800 price
$400 gross margin
$160 overhead
$240 profit
In other words you need to sell FOUR or FIVE iPadMini to make the same profit as a single iPhone6+
Its obvious the Mini needs to disapear so it does not canibalize the regular iPad/6+.
Or they need to sell the Mini for $499
Maybe a course a financial management might help, before you post such nonsense.
I could see this as possible. They may not have worked out the kinks in having a Force Touch display that large and really what else is there to be done. Release the iPad Mini they should have last year that matches the specs of the Air in the meantime.
The whole iPad Pro might be vaporware or they might actually be about to release a larger tablet. Something tells me if they do it will be exactly like the Air but bigger. After the ire they got for the hobbled Mini I don't see them having vastly different models anymore. The whole stylus might be true but it will likely be a tool sold separately, not something packaged with only this or that model.
I disagree with the notion that they will ditch the Mini. It's actually very popular. I see them around all the time and they are perfect for kids.
Also this talk of the sales stagnating seem to be based on the notion that the percent of increase is dropping. not the actual numbers. But percent means far less if the number is high. Saying that sales numbers went up 50% between Q1 and Q2 but only 25% between Q2 and Q3 means something very different if Q1 was 100 units versus if it was 100k. It's like when HP announced that they sold out of the Slate in presales, but then it turned out they only made like 5000 units and there would be a 4-6 month delay before they could make more. iPads might only be 5% over last quarter but if that last quarter was 250k units that's still impressive. Heck even if they are down 5% from last quarter if it starts that high its really nothing to fuss over. especially when you consider that basically everyone 'knows' that a new iPad will hit in the next 2-3 months and will hold up buying until then
I really wish they upgraded the iPad mini last year to match the specs of the air. I went with an Air but still find it a bit clunky. I'd gladly trade some battery life for the awesome form factor of a 6.1 mm thin mini with touch ID.
It would be a big mistake for Apple not to release an iPad Air 3 this Fall, unless they're OK with losing even more tablet market share than they already have. A 12" iPad Pro will only be a niche product. Apple can't afford to stop pushing the envelope in their primary iPad category.
I am trying to figure out exactly what enhancements are going to make the iPad Air 3 so much more attractive than the current iPad Air 2. Sure it will have performance enhancements and perhaps a thinner profile, but really, how big a differentiation will there be to actual usability? Perhaps the greatest advantage of releasing an iPad Air 3 would be to attract upgrades from current iPad Air 2 customers, but that would then flood the secondary resale market with used iPad Air 2s from upgraders. More than likely, new iPad customers (or even earlier iPad users) would purchase a used unit from an upgrader, or purchase the older stock models discounted by Apple and retailers to make way for the iPad Air 3.
For Apple, probably the best marketing strategy would be to use the iPad Pro as the flagship model, and rather than releasing an iPad Air 3, drop the price on the current iPad Air 2 touting the compatibility with the current iOS 9 operating system at a lower cost for new consumers of the iPad and for older iPad users who have been reluctant to upgrade to the newer models because of the refresh rate.
Well, at least there's quality competition in the Surface tablets, if Apple's just going to let the lineup stagnate. The logic of "oh the upgrade cycle" is bogus; people don't buy Macs every two years but Apple does both yearly and in some cases twice a year upgrades with them.
Do you actually see the iPad as being a direct competitor to the Surface, maybe the new Surface 3 but I don't think the Surface Pro 3 is. The Surface Pro line falls more in line with a MacBook Air or even the new Macbook 12". I could be wrong though, I really don't know what the majority of iPad users do with their devices. Personally, I would never use an iPad for what I use my Surface Pro 3 or MacBook for. It's just missing to many features for me to consider it as a content creation tool. I know Apple's marketing team and Apple eccentric websites like to portray the iPad as one but in a reality, well mine anyway, it's more of a media consumption device, a very good one but no where near as capable as using a machine with a full OS at your disposal. I'm not saying you can't create with the iPad, it's just that anything outside of personal use, I would prefer using a machine that was intended for such tasks and had at the very least, mouse support. Just my opinion.
The jumbo iPad is going to be a massive fail. Things under Cook are really starting to stink.
How do you figure, even something as ridiculous as a smart-watch that no one needs or really even uses when they do get one, have been selling extremely well. I think as larger iPad could be very useful for artists, architects, doctors, as cash registers, FAA investigators, police cars, city engineers, YouTube video producers, music producers (I personally would love to run TotalMix FX on a larger iPad), etc. Especially if Apple adds an active stylus, though to be honest, I kind of doubt it, if they haven't added one by now I don't think they ever will. I do have to say, the Bamboo Fine Stylus works almost as well as having a Wacom Stylus. I even use it with my Surface Pro 3 even though it already has a pen and my BlackBerry Passport and Nexus 9.
How do you figure, even something as ridiculous as a smart-watch that no one needs or really even uses when they do get one, have been selling extremely well.
Can't tell if you were being sarcastic, so:
The single biggest difference between Apple Watch and all others that went before is that people DO use Apple Watch. It's a daily wearer for almost everybody who's got one.
How do you figure, even something as ridiculous as a smart-watch that no one needs or really even uses when they do get one, have been selling extremely well.
Wow, this is a loaded comment ... I use my AppleWatch a lot ... but then again, I also used my Pebble Smartwatch quite a bit and the AppleWatch is definitely a step up in usability.
The single biggest difference between Apple Watch and all others that went before is that people DO use Apple Watch. It's a daily wearer for almost everybody who's got one.
A little of both, my experience with the Apple Watch has been a little different. Most of the people around me who had bought one, including my kids and husband, wore them everyday for about a month, than I started to notice less and less of them wearing them. Now, only about two people out of 12 that I know personally, still wear them on a daily basis. Now this doesn't mean that the others don't ever wear them, it's just that after a while they got tired of charging them every night and not really using them for anything other than showing it off to their other friends. Seriously, no BS, I got the same response from almost all of them. It's not just the Apple Watch either, I think the whole smart-watch concept is flawed, at least at the moment. I give it another 5 years before anything exciting comes out of them. Until the day I can buy a Rolex, Tag, Omega, etc. that is mechanical, has a small sliver that attaches to the bottom to house the computer and is upgrade-able so the watch doesn't devalue, with a transparent LCD screen above that displays the smart functionality part when needed, has a battery life of a week, minimal, I'll continue to have zero interest in the concept. I'm a firm believer in watches being jewelry, when I buy one, I expect it to last a life-time or two.
Comments
after all is said and done, i'd like to simply plug in a usb drive or sd card, drag and drop the files of my choosing onto it, and put it on any computer, anywhere, with anyone.
oh yeah, also how about REAL multitasking? no, not this open one app, then hide it, then open the other app...back and forth, back and forth...B.S. yeah, yeah, yeah iOS 9 is goona address this i hear...after all these versions we are granted this ability...thank you my lord (as i bow my head in gratitude)
lets see here...the Surface Pro, on its third try, is coming into fruition: Microsoft seriously stuck to theor guns and listened to the ENDUSER...the people who matter at the end of the day. the Surface Oro has all the things one could want in a portable, powerful desktop/laptop replacement realized (other than not being able to upgrade past 8 gigs of RAM from what i understand...yeah i spec'd it out for shits and giggles) and it comes into the price range of the MacBook Pro (the BEST period because it comes with OSX and Logic Pro is exclusive to Apple...both without a doubt the BEST in their respective class). anyway the Surfae Pro is still a Windows machine: same driver BS, same user interface clunkiness (isn't that why we jump ship to the elegant Apple OS and machines to begin with?)
hey, i've got two ipad 1, two ipad 2, one ipad 3, one ipad 4 (kind of a mistake but i got it for the lightning connection...ok, ok i cavedin just because of that...pathetic i know), one ipad air 2 (which i LOVE LOVE LOVE)
Just make a device that addresses the issues of i/o and multitasking i has bellyached about above and onie might see sales of Apple tablets go into high gear again...shit, make the tablet run a real operating system and shit will be crazy. that's actually the other thing: lately, i haev REALLY been wanting to do serious work in my music making: using the softsynths i like within the daw that i like (don't worry corporate types: stick cotton in your ears) no matter were i am...shit, no, i can't do that...i have a tablet with me ALL the time and pretty much ALL the apps are at the end of e day are stupid little things that pass the time...productivity runs smack into a brickwall.
APPLE LISTEN: Make SURFACE PRO KILLER.
The only weird thing is then the mini and the Air would have the same processor again. So would they both get a processor bump in 2016? Or just the Air gets updated and not the mini?
This advice is solid gold. What better way to deal with declining interest and competition from larger phones than to stop innovating the iPad for a year and allow it's hardware and features to fall well behind larger phones? Brilliant.
This is where all the money to develop new iPads is going
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/leaked-documents-prove-apple-already-191836471.html
self driving cars are already being tested by Apple.
iPads have peaked. Time for Apple to concentrate on other areas (cars, music, tv, payments)
You keep saying iPads / tablets have peaked. Where's your evidence?
If Phil Schiller thinks he can upsell people to an iPad "pro" then I can totally see Apple not updating the iPad Air this year. Phil's all about the upsell.
The only weird thing is then the mini and the Air would have the same processor again. So would they both get a processor bump in 2016? Or just the Air gets updated and not the mini?
If apple wants to get their sales going again, they could start the price of the iPad Pro at $499 and then drop the price of the iPad Air and iPad Mini by $100. I'm sure they would move again.
Well, at least there's quality competition in the Surface tablets, if Apple's just going to let the lineup stagnate. The logic of "oh the upgrade cycle" is bogus; people don't buy Macs every two years but Apple does both yearly and in some cases twice a year upgrades with them.
Apple's laptop redesigns are at this point quite infrequent. The upgrades are generally just replacing the processor and perhaps increasing default memory. Since laptops are running relatively sophisticated applications, keeping the laptop internals up-to-date and competitive is something Apple has to do. Frankly, they don't do that enough. iPads just aren't running the kinds of apps, or multitasking between apps, enough to need their CPUs and memory configurations to be upgraded frequently. A four-year-old iPad is indeed fine for almost everything iPads are used for. Particularly in the pro and photo/video hobbyist market that laptops need to keep up with, that frequently isn't the case.
Also, replacing one Intel CPU with a better one that fits in the same socket, or replacing memory DIMMs with double-capacity memory DIMMs is a no brainer.
The larger problem on the laptop side (well, not a problem for us consumers) is the wide variety of target markets that Apple still caters to. The ultra-light, the light but not too big, the cutting-edge weight-reducing design experiments, and the high end video workhorse are all different markets that require different internals to match their weight and power requirements. iPads don't have an equivalently complex differentiated market, though we'll see if the iPad Pro starts a trend toward that. Apple even keeps the old non-retina Macbook Pro going for those who want to be able to replace hard drives and upgrade memory every year, and to run with an internal DVD drive. But, they are only upgrading the CPU and memory configurations on those. I presume they will continue making the regular Macbook Pro until they simply run out of factory capacity, since their margin must be quite high given the lack of redesign investment. Though I guess they can always make more of them to sit on shelves when their factories aren't busy making anything else.
You can say the same about the other iPads though. The entry level models are not much more expensive than the mini. Why would say a $75 net profit be much better than $50 if you lose 1/3-1/2 of the unit volume? The iPad ASP is $415 so a significant number sold are $399 or under. If you make the entry level $399 then will people automatically move from the $299 tier to $399 or just migrate to a $99-299 Android tablet or upgrade even less often? Tablets are lower importance than phones and PCs and phablets are no good for movies, books, long browsing sessions. If they were, Apple would not have avoided making a 7" tablet; the minimum they felt usable for tablet use was an 8" 4:3 screen size. The iPad mini is ideal for kids using. There's no way they'd get a $750 phablet to play with.
Look at this guy trying to use an iPhone 6 Plus for typing a document on:
[VIDEO]
For certain scenarios like a very mobile blogger that doesn't want to carry a bag, it has its advantages but there's no way that most users who do prolonged browsing sessions, heavy document editing, movie editing, photo editing will substitute any iPad for a phablet. The mini hits a very desirable price point for people that don't want a phone contract.
The iPhone is always coming out with things that compel people to upgrade. A better camera will always get a group of people upgrading but this doesn't matter on the iPad. Apple Pay is a good feature but you're not likely going to haul an iPad into a store to pay for things at a terminal. The iPad has a big screen already so a bigger one is not going to make a significant difference to how you use it.
People like new experiences so adding a new way to interact with the iPad with gestures and tactile feedback would be compelling to some people. If they'd blocked iOS 9 from some older devices, that would have shifted more hardware but it's frustrating to be on the receiving end of this.
They sell about 60-70 million iPads per year. Cutting out the mini would potentially lose them about 1/3-1/2 of their units. It might raise the margins but at a significant cost in the volume of people paying for services like the App Store, accessories etc. Any loss to Android or Surface can potentially mean someone decides to move other products like their phones too. Lowering the price of the Air could offset the volume loss but then it hits the margins again and it's not going to be made up by pushing people into buying a phablet, which isn't a replacement for people who want a proper tablet experience, just for people who would occasionally use a tablet and don't mind having an uncomfortably sized phone all of the time.
If the upgrade cycle for the iPad is 3-5 years then unique buyers would be about 200-300 million. PCs seem to be in use by about 1.5-2 billion and just over 300m sold per year. That's roughly a 5 year upgrade cycle and it means about 1 in 5 people who own a PC own an iPad.
I think Apple's big sell with the iPad is to replace limited-use PCs with a limited device. Microsoft's route with Surface is closer to the netbook route (full featured, low performance, poor user experience) and the iPad so far has been more successful.
Maybe Apple has hit the 20-25% of limited-use PC owners already (and a similar amount use alternative tablets) and the rest need or think they need the full PC experience.
If they think they can grow the sales volume more, they need to figure out what those limited-use PC users are doing with their computers that they won't give up, try to offer that capability and market it to them. Steam apparently has 125 million active users so PC games could play a role but not necessarily the bigger titles.
Weak upgrades from one model to another certainly aren't going to convince people to upgrade. Adding touch id to the iPad mini 2 and calling it version 3 isn't going to get many mini 2 owners to buy the new one. Getting a new GPU will be good for gamers, maybe the same anti-reflective coating on the Air.
Company wide overhead rate is 20% ( 50 Billion revenue, 10 billion in overhead)
Even if we cut that rate in HALF (which is crazy) the Mini still makes horrible margins at 10% overhead.
$400 price
$100 gross margin
$40 overhead
$60 profit
Hell, lets even make believe the Mini had no overhead expense except Corporate tax of 25%
$400 price
$100 gross margin
$25 overhead
$75 profit
That is the absolute minimum expense with ZERO overhead except tax. So we know for SURE the profit is below $75 and probably closer to $50. Now lets look at your typical iPhone6+
$800 price
$400 gross margin
$160 overhead
$240 profit
In other words you need to sell FOUR or FIVE iPadMini to make the same profit as a single iPhone6+
Its obvious the Mini needs to disapear so it does not canibalize the regular iPad/6+.
Or they need to sell the Mini for $499
Maybe a course a financial management might help, before you post such nonsense.
Yeah. Like the iPhone 6/+, the iPad Air 2, the MacBook, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Logic Pro X...
Troll.
The whole iPad Pro might be vaporware or they might actually be about to release a larger tablet. Something tells me if they do it will be exactly like the Air but bigger. After the ire they got for the hobbled Mini I don't see them having vastly different models anymore. The whole stylus might be true but it will likely be a tool sold separately, not something packaged with only this or that model.
I disagree with the notion that they will ditch the Mini. It's actually very popular. I see them around all the time and they are perfect for kids.
Also this talk of the sales stagnating seem to be based on the notion that the percent of increase is dropping. not the actual numbers. But percent means far less if the number is high. Saying that sales numbers went up 50% between Q1 and Q2 but only 25% between Q2 and Q3 means something very different if Q1 was 100 units versus if it was 100k. It's like when HP announced that they sold out of the Slate in presales, but then it turned out they only made like 5000 units and there would be a 4-6 month delay before they could make more. iPads might only be 5% over last quarter but if that last quarter was 250k units that's still impressive. Heck even if they are down 5% from last quarter if it starts that high its really nothing to fuss over. especially when you consider that basically everyone 'knows' that a new iPad will hit in the next 2-3 months and will hold up buying until then
It would be a big mistake for Apple not to release an iPad Air 3 this Fall, unless they're OK with losing even more tablet market share than they already have. A 12" iPad Pro will only be a niche product. Apple can't afford to stop pushing the envelope in their primary iPad category.
I am trying to figure out exactly what enhancements are going to make the iPad Air 3 so much more attractive than the current iPad Air 2. Sure it will have performance enhancements and perhaps a thinner profile, but really, how big a differentiation will there be to actual usability? Perhaps the greatest advantage of releasing an iPad Air 3 would be to attract upgrades from current iPad Air 2 customers, but that would then flood the secondary resale market with used iPad Air 2s from upgraders. More than likely, new iPad customers (or even earlier iPad users) would purchase a used unit from an upgrader, or purchase the older stock models discounted by Apple and retailers to make way for the iPad Air 3.
For Apple, probably the best marketing strategy would be to use the iPad Pro as the flagship model, and rather than releasing an iPad Air 3, drop the price on the current iPad Air 2 touting the compatibility with the current iOS 9 operating system at a lower cost for new consumers of the iPad and for older iPad users who have been reluctant to upgrade to the newer models because of the refresh rate.
Do you actually see the iPad as being a direct competitor to the Surface, maybe the new Surface 3 but I don't think the Surface Pro 3 is. The Surface Pro line falls more in line with a MacBook Air or even the new Macbook 12". I could be wrong though, I really don't know what the majority of iPad users do with their devices. Personally, I would never use an iPad for what I use my Surface Pro 3 or MacBook for. It's just missing to many features for me to consider it as a content creation tool. I know Apple's marketing team and Apple eccentric websites like to portray the iPad as one but in a reality, well mine anyway, it's more of a media consumption device, a very good one but no where near as capable as using a machine with a full OS at your disposal. I'm not saying you can't create with the iPad, it's just that anything outside of personal use, I would prefer using a machine that was intended for such tasks and had at the very least, mouse support. Just my opinion.
The jumbo iPad is going to be a massive fail. Things under Cook are really starting to stink.
How do you figure, even something as ridiculous as a smart-watch that no one needs or really even uses when they do get one, have been selling extremely well. I think as larger iPad could be very useful for artists, architects, doctors, as cash registers, FAA investigators, police cars, city engineers, YouTube video producers, music producers (I personally would love to run TotalMix FX on a larger iPad), etc. Especially if Apple adds an active stylus, though to be honest, I kind of doubt it, if they haven't added one by now I don't think they ever will. I do have to say, the Bamboo Fine Stylus works almost as well as having a Wacom Stylus. I even use it with my Surface Pro 3 even though it already has a pen and my BlackBerry Passport and Nexus 9.
How do you figure, even something as ridiculous as a smart-watch that no one needs or really even uses when they do get one, have been selling extremely well.
Can't tell if you were being sarcastic, so:
The single biggest difference between Apple Watch and all others that went before is that people DO use Apple Watch. It's a daily wearer for almost everybody who's got one.
How do you figure, even something as ridiculous as a smart-watch that no one needs or really even uses when they do get one, have been selling extremely well.
Wow, this is a loaded comment ... I use my AppleWatch a lot ... but then again, I also used my Pebble Smartwatch quite a bit and the AppleWatch is definitely a step up in usability.
Can't tell if you were being sarcastic, so:
The single biggest difference between Apple Watch and all others that went before is that people DO use Apple Watch. It's a daily wearer for almost everybody who's got one.
A little of both, my experience with the Apple Watch has been a little different. Most of the people around me who had bought one, including my kids and husband, wore them everyday for about a month, than I started to notice less and less of them wearing them. Now, only about two people out of 12 that I know personally, still wear them on a daily basis. Now this doesn't mean that the others don't ever wear them, it's just that after a while they got tired of charging them every night and not really using them for anything other than showing it off to their other friends. Seriously, no BS, I got the same response from almost all of them. It's not just the Apple Watch either, I think the whole smart-watch concept is flawed, at least at the moment. I give it another 5 years before anything exciting comes out of them. Until the day I can buy a Rolex, Tag, Omega, etc. that is mechanical, has a small sliver that attaches to the bottom to house the computer and is upgrade-able so the watch doesn't devalue, with a transparent LCD screen above that displays the smart functionality part when needed, has a battery life of a week, minimal, I'll continue to have zero interest in the concept. I'm a firm believer in watches being jewelry, when I buy one, I expect it to last a life-time or two.