Great work, thanks. Glad that Fortune's PED has sent the link.
My take-aways:
1) Market Research companies have dozens of Non-Apple customers that want to feel good about competing against such a powerful value-proposition, iOS. Hence the Market Researchers feed the beast.
2) Platforms: The market share numbers for Apple vs. Android would look much better for Apple if the Android market share was shown as it really is: fragmented. Further many white box products are not platforms in the sense of having a vibrant open 3rd party software and content ecosystem.
3) Even in the old PC/Mac domain, the Mac, is worth about $60B. Not quite 'dead'.
Sure for graphics, but I bet your RIP, color proofing, plate imager, press software, accounting and web site do not run on Macs. People who live and work in Mac centric environments sometimes forget that most business, manufacturing, banking, medical, government, military, scientific research, education and virtually every other professional field uses primarily Windows.
Let's see if I can put this post in the right place this time!
Everything but the accounting software runs on Macs. As usual, the anti-Mac guy is parroting lame propaganda from 1997.
For the purpose of comparing market share of device like the articles about. Screen with separate keyboard and pointing device (mouse, trackpad etc).
It's fair enough to say the tablet market is taking sales from the PC market. But putting tablets into the same market is just silly. If you did that why not put games consoles in too? Lots of PC's are sold for gaming, consoles have similar hardware, they have internet browsers, they have apps for tv, can play music etc. Xbox even has skydrive. Or what about smart TV's? They have an OS that you can write apps for, they can browse the web etc. Or what about the old Amstrad email phone? Or this Android based mp3 player http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/9119734.htm
It makes sense to split the markets up into similar devices that can be used in similar ways. An iPad can do a lot of the stuff a PC does, but it is not used in the same way.
If game consoles were rapidly replacing PCs among PC gamers, it would be useful for anyone involved in the gaming industry to look at the market for (consoles and PC sales) when making decisions about platforms. Microsoft was gravely concerned about the original PlayStation eating up PC sales, for example, which launched the Xbox effort.
In general terms however, game consoles aren’t usually described as being significant to PC sales. They’re only used for games. Nobody really browses the web on a PS3, and console media consumption probably has impact on home stereo gear or Smart TVs than PCs.
You can’t say that about iPad, which has replaced the conventional PC for millions of people, and served as a direct replacement for client PCs in a variety of business and education settings. It used to be that the general concept of a PC was a box with components. But iPad delivered a form factor at a cost where it became a very popular device.
Microsoft spent years trying to challenge Apple’s device with transformer notebooks, netbooks and thick x86 slates. Surface is close to iPad, but is trying to be more like an iPad/netbook hybrid, at a higher price point. It’s not working at all. Google entered tablets with Honeycomb slates with 16:9 screens and a 3D interface that layered on "Droid" complexity and brought back lots of old PC cruft via Android. Flopped miserably. It’s now trending closer to iPad-like devices, but still isn’t making any headway.
It’s not useful to call everything a PC, but iPads are clearly being used for tasks conventional PCs were previously bought for. That makes your arbitrary distinction of PC = "separate keyboard and pointing device" incorrect, or more precisely: not useful. PC makers have sold Tablet PCs without keyboards, just not in significant quantity.
And of course, DOS PCs lacked pointers from 1981 to 1995, 14 years. Nearly as long as Windows PCs have been around.
Sure for graphics, but I bet your RIP, color proofing, plate imager, press software, accounting and web site do not run on Macs. People who live and work in Mac centric environments sometimes forget that most business, manufacturing, banking, medical, government, military, scientific research, education and virtually every other professional field uses primarily Windows.
Let's see if I can put this post in the right place this time!
Everything but the accounting software runs on Macs. As usual, the anti-Mac guy is parroting lame propaganda from 1997.
Quickbooks accounting software works fine on a Mac or you can even use their online version in Safari. The fact of the mater is that hardly anyone uses Macs for any of the industries I mentioned even though they easily could if they wanted to. As far as the printing industry goes, which is what I initially responded to, you can only do the page layout and graphics on a Mac, and you should, because that is what everybody uses, but all of the machinery control systems are all done on either Windows or UNIX. All those other industries use Windows, well, because everyone just does, not because they couldn't use a Mac, just no one does. They are almost exclusively Windows centric environments.
That useless pice of crap, the mini, at 600$. I bet it will sell less than the 3000+ $ Mac Pro.
You have such remarkable insight. Take a look at the breakdown of the mini. In fact look at the $800 model. The GPU even with iris graphics will be way below the mac pro, but the quad mac pro will be closer than you think when it comes to X86 power. If you look at the breakdown of the $3000 model, it looks like an E5-1620V2 and 2 pitcairn cards with their framebuffers cut in half from their PC side equivalents. I could see a case for it if the workload aligns well, but how does that make the mini a useless piece of crap? Constraints on things like ports and serviceability are present across all Macs at this point.
To counter this someone should do a side-by-side-by-side comparison with the Walmart tablets and either Apple or Samsung. Perhaps a seemingly objective reviewer like Consumer Reports. This would get noticed, and, I assume, show the Land Rover vs. Yugo performance I would expect.
In essence, here is where you fail. Apple has been selling iPads since 2010. At what state in time did all the other manufacturers start selling comparable tablets? Key word COMPARABLE. Yes, some were selling what you might call tablets long before 2010, but we need to focus on the copycat format of what is deemed a tablet today. Or give Apple credit of exploding a market that sucked @S$ before iPads that allowed other companies to even attempt to make the kind of money they can today.
So Apple starts from a sale position of 0 units in April 2010. There are obviously a million ways to look at, gather, analyze, and present data, but here is just one to look at. This is the total sales of all iPads since the first release broken down by year.
2010 - 7.5 Million
2011 - 32.4 Million
2012 - 58.3 Million
2013 - ~70 Million
That totals ~170 million units. In just over 3 years. Sales may have "slowed", but that is perspective. They are still selling more each year than previous. Like everyone else mostly.
Lets compare that to each individual company as I hate using the "Android as a whole" when you need to look at profits and share versus an actual competing manufacturer, not an idea.
As already established that becomes difficult to impossible due to reporting methods. For sake of argument though Samsung announced doubling its sales this year from last year. That is guestimated at this.
2011 - ~192,000
2012 - ~20 million (ironically IDC guessed 16.8 million)
2013 - ~40 million
That totals ~62 million in roughly the same time span.
So analysts and people like you start quoting shit numbers like quarter over quarter or year over year growth and how the competition is 123% or 400% or 50,000% versus Apple's 0.6% growth. This is such rubbish and exactly what DED has been trying to dispel with his articles.
Go back and look at Apple's growth from 2010 to 2011. What percentage growth was that? That is an astonishing number isn't it?
So come back 2 years from now and restate your position please. I would gladly eat a bucket of crow if you did and it actually still showed Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, etc. as continually having 125%, 400% (or whatever) plus YoY or QoQ growth numbers. That, for example would put Lenovo selling just under 10 million tablets next year and 40 million the following. Not likely. Not with the multitude of competitors. And if Apple starts actually dropping in unit sales by year it will still take years to catch up to what Apple has already sold. That is if Apple stops selling them today and makes no more ever.
The point is that other companies growth looks massive in comparison right now only due to the time in the game. Apple has been selling this market segment longer as I outlined above as to what is a "tablet".
Some of these companies may never reach 170 million total tablet sales ever, but we shall have to wait and see who stays in the market and who folds their tablet divisions.
So, again, I would love to see the same headlines in a couple years, or even quarters, applied to Apple's competition screaming "SAMSUNG TABLETS SHIPMENTS DECLINING HORRIBLY" or "LENOVO TABLET GROWTH PLUMMETING". That is what DED's pieces are constantly targeted towards. The fact that mainstream media does not apply the same standards they do to Apple. They hide in the lump sum game of total market share of platform (Android) or some other stupid nonsense.
(Proof in point - HP tablets - ever heard of them? Well in 2011 they held 17% of the non-iPad tablet numbers. 1% more than Samsung's 16%) That was huge growth for them back then and reported as such. I don't recall seeing anywhere near the same doom and gloom headlines Apple continues to get from wall street and analysts when HP totally bowed out. Even though Apple is destroying the profits tables and nowhere close to actually losing money.)
I was disputing that Samsung and Lenovo are having having 'no substantial impact on Apple' (the authors words), which I demonstrated in 2 ways, industry growth (and the obvious substitution that is occurring) and Apple's decision to make the iPad mini.
Your well written response, which I largely agree with, is off topic and doesn't address what I wrote. I agree with you that it is highly unlikely that Samsung and Lenovo will be able to maintain their present trajectories.
If you feel that Android is having no substantial impact on Apple, I'd like to hear your views.
To FBaker. I do not disagree with what you posted, but my post focused on how the numbers are messed up and a comment that JamesMac mad specifically regarding iPads VS the World.
What your reply really shows though is how people take one thing and mutate it back to such generic meaningless numbers.
With what you posted you would again have to do what I did to break things down to make more sense. Yes, 303 million computers sold in X amount of time. How many were Apple? How many were HP? How many were Lenovo, Dell, Samsung, White Box, etc. Now what percentage did Apple increase or decrease Year over Year? Quarter over Quarter? How about the others? Did they decline in percentages? Did Apple decline?
You then have to break down the 303 million number further. How many are Kiosks? How many are Servers? Are Linux/Unix boxes counted? Many, many more questions like those.
Apple does not sell products in some segments that those counted PCs are sold in. Some they do. Some segments are being taken over by other devices (like cash registers moving to tablet systems not counted as PCs like the iPad).
In essence, the whole thing is an effort in futility to argue about what numbers truly mean. The bottom line for me is Apple making money as a company? Are they in a position to continue? Do they sell products that I purchase, or would like to?
For me the answer is yes so I don't really give a crap about IDG or Gartner or anyone else's drivel about Apple "failing". I speak with my wallet.
I also think this was a first rate article. Some people likely do not understand the underlining biases with these reporting agencies. I know I did not. It becomes clear when you understand who the customers are, and the services offered.
I love this 'flashlight in the coalmine'. MS hasn't even been computer science for a long time; when Bill Gates was stealing and winning one legal battle at a time, I gave him credit for his monopolistic oligarchy. Before Win95 and after XP the company has shown what it is- a conduit for sh*t OS (they only paid 50k for it) and Bloatware, including 'the thumb' Ballmer... this is just like the 'facts' supporting Federal Subsidies for Banks, Chemicals, "Farmers" and Insurance- but when they have to rely on a equal playing field, the transfer of wealth is ending, not beginning. Yes you can hotrod a Pile o Chit box and get great numbers, but your ecosystem is poisonous. Fanboy or otherwise, a Ferrari is a good choice if driving is the discussion, and now everyone knows that an Apple is a much better value, not plastic and gaseous masses, if computing is the discussion.
The home market may be changing. I have moved from a windows desktop PC to an iMac just for home use. I became so fed up with Microsoft os and so pleased with my iPad and iPhone that when it came time to replace my computer Apple was the only choice. I now have a trouble free computer that works properly, something that I didn't have under Microsoft's os. Apple is no longer just for selected markets but for home users too.
Agreed. I switched over too. I will never go back to Windows except when I have to for my job. Call me an Apple fanboy if you want, I just feel there is a difference in both software and hardware.
JamesMac. I hear what you are saying in response to my post, but I believe it was totally on topic. In your justification of your point you used the very numbers that DED talks about people using. I was showing how that is not necessarily an accurate way to defend a position. I refuted your claim that Apple is being affected by these "massive percentage gains" of others.
Are Samsung and Lenovo having an impact on Apple? How? That is what we have to prove/disprove. Are they stealing away sales from Apple or is the market as a whole growing? You end your reply with "Android" which again then lumps in all the garbage with Samsung and Lenovo. The problem with that is that Apple makes as many devices as its internal analysis and manufacturing limitations allow. So is Apple to then guess that the competition (Android in your argument - not specifically Samsung for example) is going to flood the market with 500 million devices and therefore in order to maintain a "no impact" position rush out and produce 2 billion devices to maintain a 70% marketshare? (Inaccurate numbers to illustrate the point.)
My position is that I am perfectly happy that Apple sold 14 million last whatever and sold 19 million this whatever. It is still a significant increase. As the segment numbers get larger the percentage increase can do nothing but shrink as you will see Lenovo and Samsung's percentage "gains" lessen. That in essence devalues the word "impact" in my opinion. Compound that by adding previously uncounted devices to a segment, or lumping all Android as if they were a single company. It would be like adding Xbox or Playstation sales to overall PC numbers. Or making Nintendo now a "PC" manufacturer and then showing the impact of percentage growth for Dell and HP because of the millions previously uncounted devices from those 3 products.
You are 100% welcome to have a different opinion on that. I still think this is what DED is fighting a lot of the time with his articles.
Honestly though, every company has an impact on every other competing company. That is how capitalism works. The funny thing is that when Apple came and took over the current markets they did take over, no one was reporting how in trouble their long time entrenched competitors were or the "impact" Apple had on them.
As for the decision to make the iPad Mini, we don't know the answer to that yet do we? Jobs was adamant that he was never going to produce that type of device. Adamant. Did they argue internally over that and produce prototypes before or after others brought out such devices? Did Steve simply say - no!? Did they in fact make it as a direct response to those devices? It was announced a year after Steve's passing. Did his passing open the door to announce the product?
Unless you were on Apple's Board or an Executive we might never know. We can definitely make assumptions and you may in fact be 100% correct on that, but we don't unequivocally know.
The 7" Galaxy Tab was released in September of 2010. It had little impact at the time. Unfortunately to agree or even disagree with you currently, we would need a breakdown of tablets by size. How many iPad minis VS 7" Tabs VS other 7" whatevers. Even Apple does not provide those detailed numbers for us though.
Had there been the internet like we have today, the same debates would have occurred with cars, televisions, rotary dial phones, coffee makers etc. Pretty much any device that did not exist in every home and grew to that level. How was Ford "impacted" and are they dead as a company today because of the changing landscape? Some companies are dead and some are still here, like Ford. And Apple.
I've personally given up on GARTNER and IDC reports. I've never read of these companies calling the demise of Porsche and Ferrari against the Hyundai, Kia's sales. So why are they doing this to APPLE ?? go figure.......
The low end android devises are so useless but add up the numbers against android while every single ios devise sold is usable.
It's about time GARTNER and IDC take things seriously and compare apples to apples or atleast use some statistics to use a certain mhz capacity to compare apple sales to android sales or give up their day job and work directly for google and shamesong (samsung).
The biggest problem Apple has at the moment isn't that the tech industry doesn't recognize Apple's profitable numbers of tablets, but neither does Wall Street. Wall Street is valuing Apple as a company who has lost a vast amount of tablet market share and is losing more by the day. Wall Street is ignoring Apple's profits and is only concerned about the iOS platform losing market share to the Android platform. Wall Street isn't comparing company against company it's comparing one company selling iOS tablets in a limited price range against possibly 50 or more companies selling Android tablets at any price point. Wall Street considers Android far more powerful platform based on sales numbers than Apple's platform based on profits. There has to be the perception on Wall Street that no company can maintain profitability and growth over such overwhelming odds of lower-priced products.
So forget about Gartner, IDC, et al. As long as the big Wall Street investors believe Apple will be the big failure in the long run then Apple doesn't stand much of a chance of ever being properly valued based on profits or revenue as a single company. As a shareholder, I realize that Apple's goals have never been to sell the most products but that's not helping my shareholder valuation. Wall Street should certainly realize Apple's target market goals are being met but it's just not good enough for investors and Apple is being valued as a failing company for that reason. One might actually think the tech industry in general doesn't like Apple for being such a disruptive company and neither does Wall Street. It's a rather stupid conspiracy theory, but that's the way it seems to me.
Comments
My take-aways:
1) Market Research companies have dozens of Non-Apple customers that want to feel good about competing against such a powerful value-proposition, iOS. Hence the Market Researchers feed the beast.
2) Platforms: The market share numbers for Apple vs. Android would look much better for Apple if the Android market share was shown as it really is: fragmented. Further many white box products are not platforms in the sense of having a vibrant open 3rd party software and content ecosystem.
3) Even in the old PC/Mac domain, the Mac, is worth about $60B. Not quite 'dead'.
Sure for graphics, but I bet your RIP, color proofing, plate imager, press software, accounting and web site do not run on Macs. People who live and work in Mac centric environments sometimes forget that most business, manufacturing, banking, medical, government, military, scientific research, education and virtually every other professional field uses primarily Windows.
Let's see if I can put this post in the right place this time!
Everything but the accounting software runs on Macs. As usual, the anti-Mac guy is parroting lame propaganda from 1997.
To whom are you responding?
PS: There are no apps for the Mac. /s
Your ignorance is strangely amusing.
Yes, I'm quite ignorant to whom you are responding to since you neither mentioned nor quoted anyone in your comment.
For the purpose of comparing market share of device like the articles about. Screen with separate keyboard and pointing device (mouse, trackpad etc).
It's fair enough to say the tablet market is taking sales from the PC market. But putting tablets into the same market is just silly. If you did that why not put games consoles in too? Lots of PC's are sold for gaming, consoles have similar hardware, they have internet browsers, they have apps for tv, can play music etc. Xbox even has skydrive. Or what about smart TV's? They have an OS that you can write apps for, they can browse the web etc. Or what about the old Amstrad email phone? Or this Android based mp3 player http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/9119734.htm
It makes sense to split the markets up into similar devices that can be used in similar ways. An iPad can do a lot of the stuff a PC does, but it is not used in the same way.
If game consoles were rapidly replacing PCs among PC gamers, it would be useful for anyone involved in the gaming industry to look at the market for (consoles and PC sales) when making decisions about platforms. Microsoft was gravely concerned about the original PlayStation eating up PC sales, for example, which launched the Xbox effort.
In general terms however, game consoles aren’t usually described as being significant to PC sales. They’re only used for games. Nobody really browses the web on a PS3, and console media consumption probably has impact on home stereo gear or Smart TVs than PCs.
You can’t say that about iPad, which has replaced the conventional PC for millions of people, and served as a direct replacement for client PCs in a variety of business and education settings. It used to be that the general concept of a PC was a box with components. But iPad delivered a form factor at a cost where it became a very popular device.
Microsoft spent years trying to challenge Apple’s device with transformer notebooks, netbooks and thick x86 slates. Surface is close to iPad, but is trying to be more like an iPad/netbook hybrid, at a higher price point. It’s not working at all. Google entered tablets with Honeycomb slates with 16:9 screens and a 3D interface that layered on "Droid" complexity and brought back lots of old PC cruft via Android. Flopped miserably. It’s now trending closer to iPad-like devices, but still isn’t making any headway.
It’s not useful to call everything a PC, but iPads are clearly being used for tasks conventional PCs were previously bought for. That makes your arbitrary distinction of PC = "separate keyboard and pointing device" incorrect, or more precisely: not useful. PC makers have sold Tablet PCs without keyboards, just not in significant quantity.
And of course, DOS PCs lacked pointers from 1981 to 1995, 14 years. Nearly as long as Windows PCs have been around.
You missed the sarcasm tag. I think you will find that you and <B>akqies</B> are on the same side of this argument.
Sure for graphics, but I bet your RIP, color proofing, plate imager, press software, accounting and web site do not run on Macs. People who live and work in Mac centric environments sometimes forget that most business, manufacturing, banking, medical, government, military, scientific research, education and virtually every other professional field uses primarily Windows.
Let's see if I can put this post in the right place this time!
Everything but the accounting software runs on Macs. As usual, the anti-Mac guy is parroting lame propaganda from 1997.
Quickbooks accounting software works fine on a Mac or you can even use their online version in Safari. The fact of the mater is that hardly anyone uses Macs for any of the industries I mentioned even though they easily could if they wanted to. As far as the printing industry goes, which is what I initially responded to, you can only do the page layout and graphics on a Mac, and you should, because that is what everybody uses, but all of the machinery control systems are all done on either Windows or UNIX. All those other industries use Windows, well, because everyone just does, not because they couldn't use a Mac, just no one does. They are almost exclusively Windows centric environments.
Real Macs start over 900$.
That useless pice of crap, the mini, at 600$. I bet it will sell less than the 3000+ $ Mac Pro.
You have such remarkable insight
Real Macs start over 900$.
That useless pice of crap, the mini, at 600$. I bet it will sell less than the 3000+ $ Mac Pro.
Mini is crap?
You mean you use it for video and audio editing.
Otherwise it is a great piece for everything else.
In essence, here is where you fail. Apple has been selling iPads since 2010. At what state in time did all the other manufacturers start selling comparable tablets? Key word COMPARABLE. Yes, some were selling what you might call tablets long before 2010, but we need to focus on the copycat format of what is deemed a tablet today. Or give Apple credit of exploding a market that sucked @S$ before iPads that allowed other companies to even attempt to make the kind of money they can today.
So Apple starts from a sale position of 0 units in April 2010. There are obviously a million ways to look at, gather, analyze, and present data, but here is just one to look at. This is the total sales of all iPads since the first release broken down by year.
2010 - 7.5 Million
2011 - 32.4 Million
2012 - 58.3 Million
2013 - ~70 Million
That totals ~170 million units. In just over 3 years. Sales may have "slowed", but that is perspective. They are still selling more each year than previous. Like everyone else mostly.
Lets compare that to each individual company as I hate using the "Android as a whole" when you need to look at profits and share versus an actual competing manufacturer, not an idea.
As already established that becomes difficult to impossible due to reporting methods. For sake of argument though Samsung announced doubling its sales this year from last year. That is guestimated at this.
2011 - ~192,000
2012 - ~20 million (ironically IDC guessed 16.8 million)
2013 - ~40 million
That totals ~62 million in roughly the same time span.
So analysts and people like you start quoting shit numbers like quarter over quarter or year over year growth and how the competition is 123% or 400% or 50,000% versus Apple's 0.6% growth. This is such rubbish and exactly what DED has been trying to dispel with his articles.
Go back and look at Apple's growth from 2010 to 2011. What percentage growth was that? That is an astonishing number isn't it?
So come back 2 years from now and restate your position please. I would gladly eat a bucket of crow if you did and it actually still showed Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, etc. as continually having 125%, 400% (or whatever) plus YoY or QoQ growth numbers. That, for example would put Lenovo selling just under 10 million tablets next year and 40 million the following. Not likely. Not with the multitude of competitors. And if Apple starts actually dropping in unit sales by year it will still take years to catch up to what Apple has already sold. That is if Apple stops selling them today and makes no more ever.
The point is that other companies growth looks massive in comparison right now only due to the time in the game. Apple has been selling this market segment longer as I outlined above as to what is a "tablet".
Some of these companies may never reach 170 million total tablet sales ever, but we shall have to wait and see who stays in the market and who folds their tablet divisions.
So, again, I would love to see the same headlines in a couple years, or even quarters, applied to Apple's competition screaming "SAMSUNG TABLETS SHIPMENTS DECLINING HORRIBLY" or "LENOVO TABLET GROWTH PLUMMETING". That is what DED's pieces are constantly targeted towards. The fact that mainstream media does not apply the same standards they do to Apple. They hide in the lump sum game of total market share of platform (Android) or some other stupid nonsense.
(Proof in point - HP tablets - ever heard of them? Well in 2011 they held 17% of the non-iPad tablet numbers. 1% more than Samsung's 16%) That was huge growth for them back then and reported as such. I don't recall seeing anywhere near the same doom and gloom headlines Apple continues to get from wall street and analysts when HP totally bowed out. Even though Apple is destroying the profits tables and nowhere close to actually losing money.)
I was disputing that Samsung and Lenovo are having having 'no substantial impact on Apple' (the authors words), which I demonstrated in 2 ways, industry growth (and the obvious substitution that is occurring) and Apple's decision to make the iPad mini.
Your well written response, which I largely agree with, is off topic and doesn't address what I wrote. I agree with you that it is highly unlikely that Samsung and Lenovo will be able to maintain their present trajectories.
If you feel that Android is having no substantial impact on Apple, I'd like to hear your views.
To FBaker. I do not disagree with what you posted, but my post focused on how the numbers are messed up and a comment that JamesMac mad specifically regarding iPads VS the World.
What your reply really shows though is how people take one thing and mutate it back to such generic meaningless numbers.
With what you posted you would again have to do what I did to break things down to make more sense. Yes, 303 million computers sold in X amount of time. How many were Apple? How many were HP? How many were Lenovo, Dell, Samsung, White Box, etc. Now what percentage did Apple increase or decrease Year over Year? Quarter over Quarter? How about the others? Did they decline in percentages? Did Apple decline?
You then have to break down the 303 million number further. How many are Kiosks? How many are Servers? Are Linux/Unix boxes counted? Many, many more questions like those.
Apple does not sell products in some segments that those counted PCs are sold in. Some they do. Some segments are being taken over by other devices (like cash registers moving to tablet systems not counted as PCs like the iPad).
In essence, the whole thing is an effort in futility to argue about what numbers truly mean. The bottom line for me is Apple making money as a company? Are they in a position to continue? Do they sell products that I purchase, or would like to?
For me the answer is yes so I don't really give a crap about IDG or Gartner or anyone else's drivel about Apple "failing". I speak with my wallet.
I also think this was a first rate article. Some people likely do not understand the underlining biases with these reporting agencies. I know I did not. It becomes clear when you understand who the customers are, and the services offered.
Agreed. I switched over too. I will never go back to Windows except when I have to for my job. Call me an Apple fanboy if you want, I just feel there is a difference in both software and hardware.
JamesMac. I hear what you are saying in response to my post, but I believe it was totally on topic. In your justification of your point you used the very numbers that DED talks about people using. I was showing how that is not necessarily an accurate way to defend a position. I refuted your claim that Apple is being affected by these "massive percentage gains" of others.
Are Samsung and Lenovo having an impact on Apple? How? That is what we have to prove/disprove. Are they stealing away sales from Apple or is the market as a whole growing? You end your reply with "Android" which again then lumps in all the garbage with Samsung and Lenovo. The problem with that is that Apple makes as many devices as its internal analysis and manufacturing limitations allow. So is Apple to then guess that the competition (Android in your argument - not specifically Samsung for example) is going to flood the market with 500 million devices and therefore in order to maintain a "no impact" position rush out and produce 2 billion devices to maintain a 70% marketshare? (Inaccurate numbers to illustrate the point.)
My position is that I am perfectly happy that Apple sold 14 million last whatever and sold 19 million this whatever. It is still a significant increase. As the segment numbers get larger the percentage increase can do nothing but shrink as you will see Lenovo and Samsung's percentage "gains" lessen. That in essence devalues the word "impact" in my opinion. Compound that by adding previously uncounted devices to a segment, or lumping all Android as if they were a single company. It would be like adding Xbox or Playstation sales to overall PC numbers. Or making Nintendo now a "PC" manufacturer and then showing the impact of percentage growth for Dell and HP because of the millions previously uncounted devices from those 3 products.
You are 100% welcome to have a different opinion on that. I still think this is what DED is fighting a lot of the time with his articles.
Honestly though, every company has an impact on every other competing company. That is how capitalism works. The funny thing is that when Apple came and took over the current markets they did take over, no one was reporting how in trouble their long time entrenched competitors were or the "impact" Apple had on them.
As for the decision to make the iPad Mini, we don't know the answer to that yet do we? Jobs was adamant that he was never going to produce that type of device. Adamant. Did they argue internally over that and produce prototypes before or after others brought out such devices? Did Steve simply say - no!? Did they in fact make it as a direct response to those devices? It was announced a year after Steve's passing. Did his passing open the door to announce the product?
Unless you were on Apple's Board or an Executive we might never know. We can definitely make assumptions and you may in fact be 100% correct on that, but we don't unequivocally know.
The 7" Galaxy Tab was released in September of 2010. It had little impact at the time. Unfortunately to agree or even disagree with you currently, we would need a breakdown of tablets by size. How many iPad minis VS 7" Tabs VS other 7" whatevers. Even Apple does not provide those detailed numbers for us though.
Had there been the internet like we have today, the same debates would have occurred with cars, televisions, rotary dial phones, coffee makers etc. Pretty much any device that did not exist in every home and grew to that level. How was Ford "impacted" and are they dead as a company today because of the changing landscape? Some companies are dead and some are still here, like Ford. And Apple.
The low end android devises are so useless but add up the numbers against android while every single ios devise sold is usable.
It's about time GARTNER and IDC take things seriously and compare apples to apples or atleast use some statistics to use a certain mhz capacity to compare apple sales to android sales or give up their day job and work directly for google and shamesong (samsung).
So forget about Gartner, IDC, et al. As long as the big Wall Street investors believe Apple will be the big failure in the long run then Apple doesn't stand much of a chance of ever being properly valued based on profits or revenue as a single company. As a shareholder, I realize that Apple's goals have never been to sell the most products but that's not helping my shareholder valuation. Wall Street should certainly realize Apple's target market goals are being met but it's just not good enough for investors and Apple is being valued as a failing company for that reason. One might actually think the tech industry in general doesn't like Apple for being such a disruptive company and neither does Wall Street. It's a rather stupid conspiracy theory, but that's the way it seems to me.