Who will take the anti-iPad crown?
The competition for 2nd place is already heating up. There were players like the JooJoo who tried to preempt the iPad, bad idea. Then, there are the vaporware competitors: MS and Google, who have shone off concepts that don't actually exist yet. Then there are the companies like Lenovo and HP who are trotting out Windows based slates, hoping that Apple will validate the market and give their dead products a second life. Finally, there are the pure copy cats. Palm fans are already calling for Palm to make a rip-off version running WebOS. The KIRF factories in the East are already working overtime, wait, there is no such thing as overtime over there.
All of these players want to do what Apple is doing. They just want to provide an alternative for those who hate Apple. In the same way that the Droid is the anti-iPhone, what will emerge as the anti-iPad? Furthermore, how long will it take before that anti-iPad shows up and starts to make a dent in this new market?
My thoughts, I believe that the anti-iPad will come from a phone manufacturer, not a PC maker. It will not be powered by any version of desktop Windows. Just to take a walk on the wild side, I am going to say it will come from RIM. If RIM can come up with something even half as functional as the iPad on the consumer side while maintaining its business credentials, they could produce the first successful business tablet.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. What are yours?
All of these players want to do what Apple is doing. They just want to provide an alternative for those who hate Apple. In the same way that the Droid is the anti-iPhone, what will emerge as the anti-iPad? Furthermore, how long will it take before that anti-iPad shows up and starts to make a dent in this new market?
My thoughts, I believe that the anti-iPad will come from a phone manufacturer, not a PC maker. It will not be powered by any version of desktop Windows. Just to take a walk on the wild side, I am going to say it will come from RIM. If RIM can come up with something even half as functional as the iPad on the consumer side while maintaining its business credentials, they could produce the first successful business tablet.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. What are yours?
Comments
The anti-iPad will be the multitude of Windows 7 slate devices to hit the market throughout this year. They'll be just a little bit bigger, lots more buttons, less battery life, more weight. I would not be surprised to see these, combined, outsell iPad.
Moreover, I think there is still some doubt over the viability of the market at 500-900 dollars, and whether it is a real market in the first place.
Well, no one is first place yet, no?
The anti-iPad will be the multitude of Windows 7 slate devices to hit the market throughout this year. They'll be just a little bit bigger, lots more buttons, less battery life, more weight. I would not be surprised to see these, combined, outsell iPad.
Moreover, I think there is still some doubt over the viability of the market at 500-900 dollars, and whether it is a real market in the first place.
I think Apple, with its pre-order numbers: last I read, it was 91,000 in the first six hours, can be considered the undisputed front runner. I don't doubt that overall, W7 slates will someday overtake the iPad.
That is like saying that Android will overtake the iPhone. Android consists of a whole lot of phones from a lot of vendors offered by a lot of carriers, compared to what is essentially one model of iPhone. Also, many of those Android phones are given away for free as opposed to the iPhone selling at full MSRP. Even so, Android is not close to catching the iPhone, yet. I predict it will take years before the aggregate of W7 slates make a dent in the iPad's numbers.
I think Apple, with its pre-order numbers: last I read, it was 91,000 in the first six hours, can be considered the undisputed front runner. I don't doubt that overall, W7 slates will someday overtake the iPad.
The following site is suggesting the order IDs are numbered sequentially and using them to calculate the sales, which they now put at 120,000 on the first day:
http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/ipad-preorder-numbers/
The iphone 3G sold a million in the opening weekend so 120k per day isn't on the same level, although there will only be 250k available to buy at launch.
I think it's kinda dumb to preorder anything. Why not just wait until it's in store? Even if it's sold out, is it so hard to wait a few days to get one?
I think that once people start seeing the cost of the device and realise they could get a prepay 4G iphone for the same amount, that's what they'll hold out for. If individuals then decide they need a machine to manage the 4G iphone but aren't into heavy computing, they will look at netbooks and see the HP Slate.
The following site is suggesting the order IDs are numbered sequentially and using them to calculate the sales, which they now put at 120,000 on the first day:
http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/ipad-preorder-numbers/
The iphone 3G sold a million in the opening weekend so 120k per day isn't on the same level, although there will only be 250k available to buy at launch.
I think it's kinda dumb to preorder anything. Why not just wait until it's in store? Even if it's sold out, is it so hard to wait a few days to get one?
I think that once people start seeing the cost of the device and realise they could get a prepay 4G iphone for the same amount, that's what they'll hold out for. If individuals then decide they need a machine to manage the 4G iphone but aren't into heavy computing, they will look at netbooks and see the HP Slate.
This is tablet, something most people do not have. The iPhone 3G was a phone, something 4 billion people have.
I'd say this is flipping good start.
The following site is suggesting the order IDs are numbered sequentially and using them to calculate the sales, which they now put at 120,000 on the first day:
http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/ipad-preorder-numbers/
The iphone 3G sold a million in the opening weekend so 120k per day isn't on the same level, although there will only be 250k available to buy at launch.
Your comparison is not a particularly good one. You are equating pre-order numbers for a product that no one has ever even seen, to the purchase numbers of a product that was well established. 120K is a huge first day number for a product that has never been seen and will not hit the store shelves for another three weeks. I have no doubt that if Apple had a million of them to sell on the first day, they would be sold out by noon. No matter how you slice it, the iPad is already a hit. If the vaporware slate were available for pre-order, it is a pretty good bet that no one would sign up. Why do I say this? Because such slates have been sold for years with no significant uptake in the market.
Your comparison is not a particularly good one. You are equating pre-order numbers for a product that no one has ever even seen, to the purchase numbers of a product that was well established. 120K is a huge first day number for a product that has never been seen and will not hit the store shelves for another three weeks. I have no doubt that if Apple had a million of them to sell on the first day, they would be sold out by noon. No matter how you slice it, the iPad is already a hit. If the vaporware slate were available for pre-order, it is a pretty good bet that no one would sign up. Why do I say this? Because such slates have been sold for years with no significant uptake in the market.
This is as accurate as anything that can be said about the iPad. The PC Slate has been done to death, and no new version of Windows or new take on hardware is going to change whats been done, and what's failed. People don't want it. Some traveling, busy, tech-savy people might consider one, if its productive. But its a niche of a niche of a niche.
The iPad could have been that too. But its not, at all.
They also resort to the tactic of saying that anyone who is interested in buying this thing is not only brainwashed, but brain dead. Only a stupid person would want a locked down, under featured, over priced piece of junk with an Apple logo on it. After all, the iPad does not support Flash. To these people, Flash is the new battle ground. Flash is their champion. Apple refuses to even square off against their champion. They insist that a person has to be nuts to want a device that doesn't toss up a performance grinding Flash ad every 30 seconds. How is that possible? The only thing that can explain it is that People buying this product are techno-tards.
My favorite dismissal is the one that claims that all of the pre-order numbers rolling in are bogus. They insist that the numbers are false and no one actually has any interest in this thing. What can you say to someone who sticks their fingers in their ears and then stick their head in the sand?
Oh, by the way, the vaporware devices seem to be the overwhelming favorites for the anti-Apple crowd. They are siding with the MS Currier, and even more so with the HP Slate. No one seems to be promoting any of the countless slates that actually exist. I can't imagine why.
I've been reading the comments to some of the blogs that have been reporting the pre-order numbers. The anti-Apple fervor is at a fever pitch. It is interesting to see how people are dismissing the news. I have lost count of the times I have seen the words "Apple fanboys" in this regard. Many dismiss the success because the only people who are ordering the iPad are the Apple crazies. As if there were enough fanboys to account for the overwhelming success of the iPod, iPhone, and now, the iPad. There simply aren't enough Apple fanboy nut jobs to account for it.
They also resort to the tactic of saying that anyone who is interested in buying this thing is not only brainwashed, but brain dead. Only a stupid person would want a locked down, under featured, over priced piece of junk with an Apple logo on it. After all, the iPad does not support Flash. To these people, Flash is the new battle ground. Flash is their champion. Apple refuses to even square off against their champion. They insist that a person has to be nuts to want a device that doesn't toss up a performance grinding Flash ad every 30 seconds. How is that possible? The only thing that can explain it is that People buying this product are techno-tards.
My favorite dismissal is the one that claims that all of the pre-order numbers rolling in are bogus. They insist that the numbers are false and no one actually has any interest in this thing. What can you say to someone who sticks their fingers in their ears and then stick their head in the sand?
Oh, by the way, the vaporware devices seem to be the overwhelming favorites for the anti-Apple crowd. They are siding with the MS Currier, and even more so with the HP Slate. No one seems to be promoting any of the countless slates that actually exist. I can't imagine why.
You've basically summed up why the United States as a whole has been taken over by foreign financial interests. Why Congress has no authority, or oversight of the executive branch of the government.
No one believes anything. Deny Deny Deny. Its scary, and it shows its face in all manner of ways.
Your comparison is not a particularly good one. You are equating pre-order numbers for a product that no one has ever even seen, to the purchase numbers of a product that was well established.
The original iphone didn't have a pre-order system, nor apps, nor SDK and its first weekend sales were around 700k-1m. The iPad is also a well established product. The apps will mostly be familiar, just scaled up.
120K is a huge first day number for a product that has never been seen and will not hit the store shelves for another three weeks.
It has been seen, are you forgetting the promo video, screenshots and numerous hands-on reviews? People haven't been able to use it but they've seen it.
I have no doubt that if Apple had a million of them to sell on the first day, they would be sold out by noon.
But they have 250k to sell and only sold half so that doesn't make sense.
No matter how you slice it, the iPad is already a hit.
People are certainly interested in it but we can only tell if it's a hit after launch. The iPhone/iPod touch didn't have a solid identity at the start and that's only developed over time.
If the vaporware slate were available for pre-order, it is a pretty good bet that no one would sign up. Why do I say this? Because such slates have been sold for years with no significant uptake in the market.
No they haven't. How many 10" slates with capacitive touch running Windows 7 have been sold? Some MIDs with custom UIs on unix systems haven't sold, which is what the iPad is.
They insist that a person has to be nuts to want a device that doesn't toss up a performance grinding Flash ad every 30 seconds.
Let's not assume that Apple are doing consumers a favor here. They bought a mobile ad company. They will simply push them in HTML 5 in a way that can't be blocked but still resource-consuming. The main defense of Flash is that it's still the best video format for cross-platform playback at decent quality per bandwidth (hence why 75% of all online video is Flash) and you get all the animation features and IDE, which people have careers in using.
Apple complain about Adobe's laziness but they switched OS and architecture in 5 years breaking all the software and plugins twice. Then they bring out software that competes with them (ironic considering they hate Google doing this to them). Then they put Adobe down for not supporting their platform.
I don't find lack of Flash a compelling argument against the iPad at all but adverts don't really come into it.
No one seems to be promoting any of the countless slates that actually exist. I can't imagine why.
They are mostly from previously unknown brands. Apple is a trusted brand for quality. HP is really the only competition right now and already have solid touch computers on the market.
The original iphone didn't have a pre-order system, nor apps, nor SDK and its first weekend sales were around 700k-1m. The iPad is also a well established product. The apps will mostly be familiar, just scaled up.
The iPhone was available for sale without pre-order. When people can walk into a store and actually see the product, touch it, use it, and buy it, then it is on sale. At that point, the first day numbers can be compared. This is just another lame attempt to obscure the fact that interest in the iPad is extremely high and catches the nay-sayers off guard.
I think Apple, with its pre-order numbers: last I read, it was 91,000 in the first six hours, can be considered the undisputed front runner. I don't doubt that overall, W7 slates will someday overtake the iPad.
To give the numbers some perspective, for 5 million units per quarter shipments, that's ~60k units/day at a sustained rate (~420k units per week). A sustained rate doesn't really happen until there is a multitude or products, for instance, Apple has 2 iPad products say a 7" and 10" product on different refresh cycles, that has been on the market for a year or two.
For launch quarter, I expect it to be front-loaded like you see in movie sales. Say, for the first week, Apple sells 300k iPads. For the second week, they'll 60% of that number 180k. The week after, 150k, the week after that, 130k, etc. Apple will get a bump as the open up their international markets. The numbers get easy and one can make some approximations. 300k sales during launch week, typically will mean about 120k over the next 11 weeks. That makes 1.6m iPad shipments from April 3 to June 30.
Not bad considering that the 2009 tablet market was about 4-5 million units. But those were mostly expensive lap-vertibles. The slate market is nascent, and yes, I anticipate Apple to be number one there due to their sheer market power and putting out a high quality product earlier than anyone else.
If the iPad is iPod-like in its market trends, they'll sell 2-2.5 million units during the holiday quarter. Probably 800k to 1m for the July to September quarter. That gets them to about 4 to 5 million for the 2010. I expect it to be little higher because of international markets being opened up.
They have a tough road to hoe here. And have about 6 months to really convince the market that this is product that they need. It has to eat into high-end iPod touch sales (that's a plus) and into low end Mac sales (that's a minus) to get there. I think a refresh in September is necessary. Hard to judge.
So, I'm very much hoping that they'll reach 250k pre-orders and 50k in-store pickup for April 3rd. They'll need about 300k units launch weekend to hit 1.3+ m for the quarter.
That'll do better than the competition. By the holiday quarter, it'll be interesting as I think various Win7 slates will have a pretty good experience. Less battery life for equivalent size/volume, but there's a big Win7 ecosystem out there.
That is like saying that Android will overtake the iPhone. Android consists of a whole lot of phones from a lot of vendors offered by a lot of carriers, compared to what is essentially one model of iPhone. Also, many of those Android phones are given away for free as opposed to the iPhone selling at full MSRP. Even so, Android is not close to catching the iPhone, yet. I predict it will take years before the aggregate of W7 slates make a dent in the iPad's numbers.
Well, it is up in the air, really. Even the prediction that Android will overtake iPhone sales. It may not as I'm sure the big phone companies are somewhat leery of making Google more powerful.
If the iPad proves the market is viable with, say, 5m unit shipments in the holiday quarter, yes, I think Windows 7 slates will be the next best thing. There are several battles going on:
1. ARM vs x86. Intel will get better. No will ever beat Intel's fab advantage, ever, and Intel is currently fabbing Atom about 1 year behind their desktop/laptop chips in terms of their fab process. So, I expect x86 to get more and more competitive in the perf/watt battle with ARM as they put more and more resources into it. If x86 wins, it means Win7 wins and Apple will move iPad x86. This is a long term 3 to 4 year thing. If ARM holds it own and wins, I think that is really good news for Apple as I don't think Linux-derivatives (including Android) can compete.
2. iPhone OS-X vs Win7 vs Linux derivatives. The only Linux derivative with enough market power is Android. JooJoo I think will fail, and fail bad. Android doesn't have enough polish yet for a 10" device. So, I think it is a race between iPad and Apple's gradual evolution of features and content versus x86 vendors' capability to make slate devices more finger friendly and ultra mobile friendly with Win7 already having lots of content.
3. Netbook price of $300 vs slate price of $500. This one is obvious. I think slate prices will be driven to $300 to $400. I think Apple will sell the 16 GB WiFi iPad for $400 next year, if not the holiday quarter this year. If Apple keeps the price at 500+, they are only looking for the top 5 to 10%. If that is, they obviously won't be the number 1 selling slate device. It'll be a $300 Win7 device.
The original iphone didn't have a pre-order system, nor apps, nor SDK and its first weekend sales were around 700k-1m. The iPad is also a well established product. The apps will mostly be familiar, just scaled up.
Just to make sure we talk the right numbers. Apple sold ~270k iPhones on launch weekend in 2007. AT&T activated 150k iPhones on launch weekend.
The original iPhone launch is actually a good model for predicting iPad sales. About the same price and kind of a similar market entry. In reality, Apple should sell less iPads than iPhones as the slate market is nascent. Apple will have to build momentum for the product and it has eat into netbook, PMP (iPod touch included), eReader, portable DVD player, GPS, and low end laptop sales. If it does eat into those markets,
From launch day to the end of September 2007, Apple sold about 1.3m iPhones with the vast majority at greater than $500. About 30 to 40% of iPhones at the time were bought for "black market" sales overseas as AT&T typically only activated 50% to 60% of Apple's reported iPhone sales.
Those 700k to 1m numbers were just irrational exuberance, market manipulation or reverse-expectations fodder for trolls.
Apple complain about Adobe's laziness but they switched OS and architecture in 5 years breaking all the software and plugins twice. Then they bring out software that competes with them (ironic considering they hate Google doing this to them). Then they put Adobe down for not supporting their platform.
Yup. Business is ugly. Only the paranoid survive, and it's kill or be killed. It's better off for me if Apple kills Adobe than the other way around.
The original iPhone launch is actually a good model for predicting iPad sales.
Maybe but the difference with the iPhone is it had something new. The iPad is familiar. The iPhone was also way overpriced at launch whereas the iPad is trying to be very competitively priced at launch.
In the face of everything going against the iPhone:
new product
new market for Apple
high price
new technology
general Apple hatred with the public and a desire to see them fail
rubbish camera
no video recording
no apps
despite all that, it still sold in decent numbers.
Apple have managed to push over 70 million of those devices so they are successful and so is the tech so the iPad is launching on a very different platform as it's trying to resell already popular tools.
Those 700k to 1m numbers were just irrational exuberance, market manipulation or reverse-expectations fodder for trolls.
I think it may have been assumptions about numbers sold through each channel (via AT&T vs Apple). Naturally, they'd assume even sales from both.
n reality, Apple should sell less iPads than iPhones as the slate market is nascent.
The slate market really isn't a separate thing from the netbook market. This reasoning is the same as the AIO vs desktop market. At the end of the day, it's about why people buy the machines, not the design the machine uses.
The netbook market is not emerging, it's already well-established. Most slates are simply trying to separate themselves from the crowd of standard form factors so that when someone walks into a store and sees a netbook for $300 or a touch netbook for $500, the extra profit can be made from capitalizing on the unique features with content sales.
Maybe they will sell as much as the original iPhone (6 million or so in the first year) we'll have to wait and see. For some reason, the numbers reported have taken a bit of a sharp turn:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/15/...-150000-units/
Seems a bit odd that it would drop so quickly - could be the way they are measuring preorders is wrong.
Maybe but the difference with the iPhone is it had something new. The iPad is familiar. The iPhone was also way overpriced at launch whereas the iPad is trying to be very competitively priced at launch.
I was thinking in terms of price. Price is everything (not everything, but pretty darn major). It's the number one driver for the quantities sold. The iPhone started at $500 to $600. The iPad is starting at $500 to $830.
The iPhone launch may very well be the standard bearer for how many units one can sell in the consumer market for product starting at $500. How many they sell after this year will depend on Apple proving the iPad is a viable computing product capable of replacing low in computers.
The slate market really isn't a separate thing from the netbook market. This reasoning is the same as the AIO vs desktop market. At the end of the day, it's about why people buy the machines, not the design the machine uses.
I don't think slates vs netbook/laptops is analogous to AIO versus regular old desktops. AIOs and desktops are basically the same usage model. One sits at a desk and uses one. Netbooks are really just small cheap laptops that are portable where people carry them around as a computer they can use in various places. A slate form factor, especially in the way Apple markets it, is about casual computing like your iPhone, iPod touch is, but more capable because of larger screen size.
Apple's marketing of the iPad is basically sofa computing, bed-time computer, coffee table computing, kitchen computing, etc. Netbooks are just small and cheap laptops without an optical drive and an Atom CPU. People use them like laptops. On the other hand, Apple says the iPad is "magical". That's their way of saying that the iPad users presumably will have an innate "wow" feeling when they use it, that it feels like real-live device that's an extension of your hand.
This is the dream vision of a slate, and there's plenty of skepticism that it will be achievable. So, slates and cheap laptops (netbooks = Atom, smartbooks = ARM) may have similar components, they have different usage scenarios. Overlapping (plenty), but different enough in my mind to have different classification. If we drew a clade diagram, I think netbooks would sprout from the laptop branch while Apple's iPad would sprout from the smartphone branch.
For some reason, the numbers reported have taken a bit of a sharp turn:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/15/...-150000-units/
Seems a bit odd that it would drop so quickly - could be the way they are measuring preorders is wrong.
Why? Internet pre-ordering is entirely front-loaded and caters to the enthusiasts. It should have a lot of orders the first few hours then tail-off to 10% of the level after a few days (it's like movie ticket sales). 250k unit sales the first weekend will be a good mark. They are getting close to that. After that, they have to maintain 100k a week.
For Apple to sell more, the iPad has to have good word-of-mouth, reviews, price adjustments (I think $500 is too high, maybe $400), and gradual evolution. The content has to be available including things like Netflix, Hulu, magazines and newspapers.
The competition for 2nd place is already heating up. There were players like the JooJoo who tried to preempt the iPad, bad idea. Then, there are the vaporware competitors: MS and Google, who have shone off concepts that don't actually exist yet. Then there are the companies like Lenovo and HP who are trotting out Windows based slates, hoping that Apple will validate the market and give their dead products a second life. Finally, there are the pure copy cats. Palm fans are already calling for Palm to make a rip-off version running WebOS. The KIRF factories in the East are already working overtime, wait, there is no such thing as overtime over there.
All of these players want to do what Apple is doing. They just want to provide an alternative for those who hate Apple. In the same way that the Droid is the anti-iPhone, what will emerge as the anti-iPad? Furthermore, how long will it take before that anti-iPad shows up and starts to make a dent in this new market?
My thoughts, I believe that the anti-iPad will come from a phone manufacturer, not a PC maker. It will not be powered by any version of desktop Windows. Just to take a walk on the wild side, I am going to say it will come from RIM. If RIM can come up with something even half as functional as the iPad on the consumer side while maintaining its business credentials, they could produce the first successful business tablet.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. What are yours?
I'm confused by the question.
Does "competitor" = "anti-iPad"?
I'm confused by the question.
Does "competitor" = "anti-iPad"?
I took great pains to frame the question as well as I could. By definition, an anti-iPad is a competitor. However, it is not necessary that every competitor is an anti-iPad. Some, in fact, many products exist only to compete against a successful Apple product and give haters an alternative. Those products would not exist in their current form, if at all if not for the successful Apple product. I happen to believe that most, if not all current slates fall in that category. Obviously, that is debatable, so don't bother. That does not mean that every product in this category, going forward, is an attempt to be an anti-iPad (dare I say, iPad killer)? So far, though, everything I see out there right now is being positioned as an iPad alternative.
The iPad has been defining the market for months before it was announced. People were scrambling to copy the rumor of the device. MS and Google scrambled to mock up a concept video as if to say, "We can do it too!" That is just the state of the industry right now. It is a lot like what happen to the handset industry in the wake of the iPhone. The only difference is that companies are reacting much faster so as not to get run over by the iPad train.