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posted by n1 on Friday April 25 2014, @07:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the vintage-ipad-cool dept.

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."

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by e_armadillo on Friday April 25 2014, @10:47PM

    by e_armadillo (3695) on Friday April 25 2014, @10:47PM (#36393)

    I love how critics are quick to try to extract the negative, or publicly give advice. From the earnings call, as reported by the BBC:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27135110 [bbc.com]

    This was Apple's best non-holiday quarter EVER. So the iPad dipped? who cares? Apple knows that they need to continue to innovate, they continue to invest their R&D, from the BBC article:
    ". . . Apple has acquired 24 companies in the last 18 months in order to expand its research and development into new features and products."

    They are doing just fine and don't need Bonnington or Cunningham's input . . .

    --
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