Comments on: Even as the iPad grows, Apple loses ground

By: eldernorm

eldernorm — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:20:35 +0000

Totally correct….. “Truth is that real sales numbers…” Apple sells, Samsung ships.

Remember the Zune… Big shipping numbers, lots of sitting in warehouses.

Just a thought,
en

By: Guestolio

Guestolio — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 16:39:48 +0000

You can probably throw away the “All Others” data as well.

Even if it represents numbers for anything known, you’re talking about a myriad of throw away junk. Those are the throw ins when you buy some overpriced TV or a $39 doorbuster deal at Wizmart and so on. Landfill fodder at best.

By: Luscious

Luscious — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:18:57 +0000

The iPad as we know it is doomed – thank the Surface.

By: gruberg

gruberg — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:25:40 +0000

Two things: #1 I don’t trust estimates from IDC. Generally these numbers are self-reported. Unless and until Samsung and Amazon disclose their shipments and sell-through the way Apple does, I’m not buying. That being said, do I think that Samsung and Amazon have gained share and sold tablets. Yes. To what extent is the question.

Secondly, you say “while Apple’s figured out the best way to profit off of its tablet strategy, that isn’t necessarily synonymous with remaining the most popular brand”. Now maybe I’m not as good as I used to be in math, but 43% is still way higher than 15. And further if you want to look at another definition of “popular”, when you look at purchase intent, many surveys have the iPad at super-majority numbers.

OK, one more thing. Do you think that Amazon would have sold as many Kindle Fire’s (assuming that regular Kindles aren’t in the comparison) if they actually tried to sell them for a profit? Bezos has admitted there is no profit on the hardware. Conversely, if Apple simply sold iPads at breakeven, do you think Samsung or Amazon would even approach double digit share? I’m not sure why selling things profitably is not viewed as important (not just by you, but apparently Wall Street too).

By: Danox

Danox — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:42:21 +0000

I’m guessing by the fake numbers IDC doesn’t have Nate Silver on staff working for them. Samsung, Microsoft, Google and Amazon haven’t reported a actual units sold number in years, if you are a developer deciding on which platform to design software for using IDC’s numbers will put you out of business.

By: Cross

Cross — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:22:41 +0000

jajajaja, amazing comparison…. apple reduced its market, because they sold 22.5M tablets compared with 15 in 2011, lol… what a title! I prefer to have 10% of 1 Billon than 50% of 1 Millon,

The growth of Apple (7.5M) is as large of all the sells of Samsung (7.1M), how can you say that Apple is losing ground?

By: Steve Nagel

Steve Nagel — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:28:40 +0000

Android is the Ashton Kutcher and iOS the Steve Jobs of tech. Celebrity versus talent. Your pick.

By: James Katt

James Katt — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:19:54 +0000

Note that BMW is coming out with the BMW 320i, an “inexpensive BMW”. This starts at $32,000 and rapidly rises to $40,000. That isn’t so inexpensive. But it will grow interest in BMW as well as profits as younger people can buy it.

By: James Katt

James Katt — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:18:34 +0000

Apple doesn’t have to go for marketshare. That is like asking BMW if it need to go for marketshare by selling an inexpensive BMW.

Apple has GROWN the market so its marketshare would naturally shrink. This means Apple has more room to grow since market saturation won’t be reached.

Years ago, Apple targetted 1% of all cell phones as its target. Of course, cell phones have become smartphones as companies made cheap smartphones to replace dumb phones.

Apple thus grew the smartphone market. Yes, its marketshare has shrunk. But all this means is that its profits have room to move up since the market is not saturated with Apple products.

Currently, Apple has about 70% of all the profit in the cell phone market. Not bad at all for a small marketshare – which is actually larger than Apple’s original target of 1% of the market.

By: Nicholas Paredes

Nicholas Paredes — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:39:58 +0000

Ford owned the auto industry for a bit as well. That doesn’t mean that Ford was a bad investment or that their product was headed towards irrelevancy.

These conversations are personally odd, in that who really expected that there would be a Microsoft-like dominance of mobile? Who thinks that such a scenario would be a good thing?

My problem with Apple is that they have not been open enough in the app business. Frankly, as an app designer, I start with iOS. That isn’t changing for quite a while given the inherent issues with development on other platforms. Android hasn’t even built decent media APIs yet.