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Christina Bonnington reports that the public is not gobbling up iPads like they used to. Analysts had projected iPad sales would reach 19.7 million but Apple's financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2014 show they sold 16.35 million iPads, a drop of roughly 16.4 percent since last year. "For many, the iPad they have is good enough unlike a phone, with significant new features like Touch ID, or a better camera, the iPad's improvements over the past few years have been more subtle," writes Bonnington. "The latest iterations feature a better Retina display, a slimmer design, and faster processing. Improvements, yes, but enough to justify a near thousand dollar purchase? Others seem to be finding that their smartphone can do the job that their tablet used to do just as well, especially on those larger screened phablets."
According to Andrew Cunningham the takeaway from Apple's sales drop in iPads is that Apple's past growth has been driven mostly by entering entirely new product categories, like it did when it introduced the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010 and that Apple needs an entirely new category to fuel future growth. "The most persistent rumors [of a new product category] involve TV (whether a new Apple TV set-top box or an entire television set) and wearable computing devices (the perennially imminent "iWatch"), but calls for larger and cheaper iPhones also continue."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Lazarus on Friday April 25 2014, @08:20PM
I recently powered up my Galaxy Note to take a picture when my new phone wasn't handy. It's still nice and quick, and does everything a smart phone needs to do. We used to see huge improvements, but it's all just incremental these days, so older devices deliver almost everything a newer one can.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by SrLnclt on Friday April 25 2014, @08:50PM
Same thing happened with the PC/Laptop market years ago. Late 1990's if you machine was 3 years old you may have trouble running new software. Clock speeds, available memory, HDD storage - everything got significantly better every few years. Now it is tough to convince some people it is time to dump their 8 year old Windows XP machine.
Now where do I sign up for that program from my mobile carrier where I can get a new phone upgrade 6 months after my last one?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Lazarus on Friday April 25 2014, @09:30PM
>Now it is tough to convince some people it is time to dump their 8 year old Windows XP machine.
Yep, I now replace PCs when a motherboard fails, when I used to replace them because a new model 4x as fast would come out. They've been fast enough for most games and 1080p video for quite some time. If course I'd only use XP on a machine that's not Internet connected due to the end of support.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday April 25 2014, @11:10PM
This.
As a product or service reaches maturity all advancements become marginal, and no single upgrade is really worth it. People still buy them, but more to follow the fad than anything else. Same is true of Cameras, Guns, Cars (of any given class), etc.
You have to wait several product cycles to make the upgrade worth while.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.