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Apple iPad sales expected to dip for the first full year since launch

by Mark Tyson on 2 January 2015, 13:35

Tags: iPad, Surface, Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ), PC

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For the first year, since it launched in 2010, Apple's iPad sales are expected to experience a decline. There is an outside chance that this expectation doesn't become reality - if company scores exceptionally big in iPad holiday sales - reports MarketWatch.

The rapid drop in shipments is said to be partly due to competition from larger and more powerful phablet smartphones, including Apple's own new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models. These larger smartphones are cannibalising not just the iPad, but previous best-selling tablets in general and the market is becoming saturated. Consumers are finding more reasons to stick with the devices they already own, and very few incentives to upgrade to a slightly lighter or more powerful iPad when their large screened smartphones can accomplish most of the tasks a tablet can.

Microsoft Surface on the up

According to market intelligence company ABI Research, Apple is expected to report around 68 million iPad units sold during the calendar year of 2014, marking an 8.1 per cent decline and 6 million units fewer compared to the amount sold during the 2013 calendar year. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google are also expected to note year-over-year tablet sale declines, though rivals such as Microsoft, Samsung, LG, Lenovo, HP, Dell, ASUS and Acer are all set to report increases in tablet sales.

HP tablets did better in 2014

"Historically, Apple has counted approximately 35 per cent of its iPad sales in the last calendar quarter of the year," ABI senior practice director Jeff Orr said. "Unless Apple can pull off a 32+ million unit quarter, sales for CY2014 will be down for the first year since the iPad launched."

When reflecting on the numbers, this means that the Cupertino-based technology icon will need to ship nearly half as many tablets in the final three months of 2014 than it did in all of the first nine months just to hold even with shipments a year ago. The company will be unveiling its calendar Q4/fiscal Q1 earnings later this month, and thus has yet to reveal how well its new iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 have performed during the holidays.

Deceleration

Research firm IDC also forecasted a "massive deceleration" in overall tablet growth in 2014, with the rate of uptake dropping from 52 per cent in 2013 to just 7 per cent in 2014. The firm previously predicted that 2014 will be Apple's first for iPad sale declines. However, ABI believes that tablet manufacturers in general will benefit from 16 per cent overall growth in 2015. It sees broader deployment of slates in the enterprise, tiered product portfolios and "benefits-oriented marketing messaging".



HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

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I'd chalk it up to lack of progression in tablet operating systems, if they had real multi-tasking and didn't feel like glorified phones they'd probably appeal to me more, but the way things are at the moment I'd rather use a Windows tablet (even RT) over Android or iOS
CustardInc
I'd chalk it up to lack of progression in tablet operating systems, if they had real multi-tasking and didn't feel like glorified phones they'd probably appeal to me more, but the way things are at the moment I'd rather use a Windows tablet (even RT) over Android or iOS

http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202070

But I take your point, if by ‘real’ you mean multi-screen

so this might be an interesting development

http://www.cultofmac.com/279285/ive-used-split-screen-multitasking-ipad-sucks/

But how useful is multi-screen on a small screen? I'd suggest not very.
peterb
http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202070

But I take your point, if by ‘real’ you mean multi-screen

so this might be an interesting development

http://www.cultofmac.com/279285/ive-used-split-screen-multitasking-ipad-sucks/

But how useful is multi-screen on a small screen? I'd suggest not very.

I suppose for a 4:3 screen (or whatever ratio Apple use) split screen isn't AS useful, but something like this would still work http://i.imgur.com/qmvquls.jpg (facebook chat on the left, web browser on the right).

Whereas on a 16:9 screen, something like this works very well http://i.imgur.com/3HcxPzx.jpg (OneNote on the left, Wikipedia app on the right).

It's not use of conventional windows that I'm after, they don't work particularly well with large fingers, but some way of running two apps on the screen at the same time. Win8.1 Metro multitasking is surprisingly good on a tablet (although I'd never use it on a desktop or laptop).
I like Apple gear, we have 3 Apple laptops, an iMac, 2 iPhones and a couple of iPods at home. I just can't see what the iPad offers in order to make it SO much more expensive than an Android tablet. I bought a Hudl2. I don't think the OS is as polished as iOS8.

It doesn't integrate quite as well with all my other Apple kit
It probably has a slightly smaller capacity battery
It probably isn't quite as nicely designed and the build quality probably isn't quite as good.

BUT crucially….

It's about 1/3 of the price
As it gets used for media consumption, I can carry a few microSD cards with me and pop in a different one depending on who is using the device.

The problem is probably that the cheaper tablets are now ‘good enough’ to eat away at the premium end of the market.
b0redom
I like Apple gear, we have 3 Apple laptops, an iMac, 2 iPhones and a couple of iPods at home. I just can't see what the iPad offers in order to make it SO much more expensive than an Android tablet. I bought a Hudl2. I don't think the OS is as polished as iOS8.

It doesn't integrate quite as well with all my other Apple kit
It probably has a slightly smaller capacity battery
It probably isn't quite as nicely designed and the build quality probably isn't quite as good.

BUT crucially….

It's about 1/3 of the price
As it gets used for media consumption, I can carry a few microSD cards with me and pop in a different one depending on who is using the device.

The problem is probably that the cheaper tablets are now ‘good enough’ to eat away at the premium end of the market.

I am becoming an Apple convert. I started getting fed up with Microsoft about ten years, and started using Linux for main computing, with win 2k for legacy apps.

Windows 7 was a bit of a renaissance, and while the iPad looked good, I could see no real need for one, or a tablet at all.

The the HP touchpad fire sale happened, and I jumped, and grew to like it. HP support dropped off and I installed Android on it,mand quite liked it, in fact I grew to like it more.

At the same time I was using an iMac elsewhere, so to dip a toe in the water, I built an almost comparable (:)) and that was good too, with some hardware limitations, but did give me insight into the Apple infrastructure.

So the big jump was an iMac, and now an iPad mini.

They integrate well, and I distrust Apple's infrastructure less that I distrust Google's or Microsoft's. I can use Google docs (useful in some instances), but it all just works fairly seamlessly. It is Unix under the hood and connects to my Linux server using Samba, and I had forgotten how good IM can be.

In terms of operating systems, there isn't much to choose between Android or IOS8, the differentiator is the integration with other Apple software on other platforms.

Now I am on the slippery slope, next phone will probably be an iPhone, whenever I upgrade.