The Bamster's version of a tablet computer in his "perfect" socialist system...
Posted on 12/12/2011 2:59:53 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Apple Starts to Wobble 2 Months After Jobs' Death
Two months since the death of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the firm's management is showing signs of wobbling. The market shares of the iPhone and iPad are declining, and a series of patent-infringement lawsuits against rivals are not entirely going to plan.
Apple's competitors, who were caught on the back foot by the iPhone and iPad, are rapidly releasing products aimed at toppling the leader.
◆ Shrinking Demand
U.S. market research firm Canaccord Genuity recently said Apple's share of the American table PC market is forecast to fell from 74 percent in the third quarter to 53.2 percent in the fourth, with the decisive blow being dealt by Amazon's cheap Kindle Fire, which costs just US$199. The Kindle Fire is likely to grab some 20 percent of the market in only 1.5 month since its release on Oct. 15, on the back of the low price and access to Amazon's huge content.
The iPhone 4S, the last product overseen by Jobs, is also losing its appeal. Some dealers in Korea have already slashed prices by W100,000 (US$1=W1,146) since the product was launched in early November. The phone is also subject to complaints about the short battery life and static and disrupted signal during phone calls. But the main reason is probably that consumers are waiting for the release of the all-new iPhone5 later next year, since the 4S was merely an upgrade of the 4.
KT and SK Telecom, which market the iPhone 4S in Korea, have been caught off guard by lackluster demand, since Apple apparently asked dealers to buy a batch of at least 500,000 units. SK is said to be having trouble selling out the initial batch. And because of the popularity of fourth-generation LTE protocol, SK is focusing more on selling LTE phones than the 3G iPhone 4S. So far KT and SK have sold only a combined 300,000 units. An SK Telecom official said the gadget "has become a headache."
◆ Rivals Going on Offensive
A court in Mannheim, Germany ruled Friday that Apple infringed Motorola's third-generation mobile communications standards and banned the sale of the iPhone and iPad. That could increase the chances of Samsung Electronics, which has also filed a patent suit against Apple in the same town.
PC makers, which were badly hurt by the popularity of the iPhone and iPad, have also gone on the offensive, releasing so-called "ultrabooks," an industry standard for the next generation of laptops recently unveiled by Intel. Ultrabooks are half as thick and weigh half as much as existing laptops, and it takes just a third of the time to boot them.
But analysts say Apple's heyday is not over yet because it still boasts strong software and content. The app store, which opened in July of 2008, saw 10 billion accumulated downloads as of January of this year and reached 18 billion 10 months later, showing how much clout the company still wields among consumers.
A temporary wobble might exist....but if this I-TV gadget comes through....then the wobble automatically goes away....for a long time.
>> a series of patent-infringement lawsuits against rivals are not entirely going to plan
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
... eh Swordmaker?
I like how the author is using as evidence for Apple’s wobble that people aren’t buying a phone now because they are waiting for Apple’s IPhone5. And also evidence: Apple’s products are cheaper two months in than they were at the launch — something which has never ever happened in the entire history of technological gadgets.
“Apple’s products are cheaper two months in than they were at the launch — something which has never ever happened in the entire history of technological gadgets”
You forgot the sarcasm tag. Technical gadgets are always cheaper a few months after release.
Apple creates a device, the iPad, that would have been beyond the dreams of science fiction only ten years ago.
Now, a few short years later, there are dozens of competitors, looking to gain market share by releasing similar or superior devices, at lower prices.
Now the Indians are looking to market a tablet computer that will sell for less than fifty bucks.
So the cost of a tablet computer, which did not exist in 2001, has gone from 20 hours turning a wrench to 10, to five, and soon to two.
But the US Capitalist System has “never worked”, don’tcha know...
And this is before Windows 8 arrives circa September-October 2012....
Of course Apple was going to “wobble”.....that is the nature of competition, especially in higher technology hardware.
Those who predicted Apple would dominate tablets and phones for years do not understand free markets and competition.
This is all good news for the people.
From what I have seen and played with on Windows 8...sucks. Might be Windows 7 is the best for a long time.
“Apple creates a device, the iPad, that would have been beyond the dreams of science fiction only ten years ago.”
Not quite - SciFi thought of it over 30 yrs ago:
“So the cost of a tablet computer, which did not exist in 2001,”
Yes they did, Microsoft had one....
Microsoft was pioneering Tablet PCs long before Apple:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_computer#History
Most people only have access to Windows 8 on a desktop or laptop, without a touch screen. The interface lends itself better to touch screens, where I think it could do well.
Wait until the iPad 3 comes out. I will be replacing my original iPad as soon as it does.
The Bamster's version of a tablet computer in his "perfect" socialist system...
I think you need to wait for the “feature complete” beta of Windows 8 due in early February 2012 before making that judgement. The version given out to developers some months ago is still very feature-incomplete.
Most people only have access to Windows 8 on a desktop or laptop, without a touch screen. The interface lends itself better to touch screens, where I think it could do well.
I thought it was interesting how the rest of the world does it.
When phone/desktop makers wanted to make a tablet they all went from phone up to tablet. Microsoft ditched the phone OS and shrunk the desktop to the tablet, thereby turning the phone Windows Phone 7 into an irrelevant niche product sort of like Palm's WebOS. (Heck, even HP took WebOS up to the tablet)
As a developer, I see the tablet as more of a grown up phone not as a shrunken desktop or crippled notebook. The desktop will always be the desktop. I see absolutely no advantage of staring at a 24" screen with oily fingerprints all over it and having sore shoulders from constantly hovering my hands inches off the table surface touching and swiping things on the screen.
On the other hand, the tablet boots Right Now and thus serves a totally different purpose. I don't know of anyone who has taken their desktop or laptop to bed and tried to read for a couple hours holding the display up while supine.
Voice control just isn't go to be compatible with the typical open office environments. OTOH, I can see that in Obama's new economy where the government views the remaining few Producers as overweight, they just might mandate mixing Microsoft's Kinect technology with massive video screens so we can get an aerobic workout doing a full day of Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report shuffling spreadsheets and composing presentations.
I'm currently putting together a project that puts a typical desktop app on the tablet, but simple things like sorting and indexing large compressed files harkens back to the days of the 640K PCs with extremely limited memory heap. What tablets out there have several gigs of high speed RAM?
I don’t think that Jobs absence has anything to do with these issues... Jobs being alive or dead these same issues would be happening.
The 4S was an upgrade, nothing game changing (though SIRI certainly is, the phone itself, not so much), and while Kindle Fire is selling (any decent $200 tablet would sell) it is not showing that people are choosing Fire over Ipad, they are just getting a market that can’t or doesn’t want to spend $500 on a tablet.
There is definitely demand for a decent $200 tablet, but that isn’t cutting into iPad sales. People are buying the Fire because they will spend $200, not because people aren’t buying iPads because they are choosing a Kindle.
It is going to be a while before we can see the impact of Job’s death has on the company, I don’t see anything in this article that can be attributed to him no longer leading the company. The real test will be 1-2 years or so from now, when all the things he was involved with launching are no longer in the pipeline... that will show how Apple is going to be post Jobs.
Personally I think Apple will lose some of its premium status and have to begin to compete more price wise, but that’s just basic market dynamics, not lose of a CEO.
Quite. Don't underestimate this point, people. A LOT of tablets have sold because of the implied vague promise that they're a full-blown PC for $100-250, cheap enough for a small enough package that they will in fact go "meh, it's a couple hundred bucks, why not". Many will blow a day's pay on some toy with little thought; when the price eats into the better part of a week's pay, not so much impulse ... and a lot more devotion if they do buy.
Apple could do a little better in getting the notion across that "if you buy a cheaper tablet, you'll end up buying another cheaper tablet, so just get an iPad to start." A lot of people will blow $200 2-3 times only to find the products are inadequate, losing enough that they could have bought something that "just works" after all if they'd thought it thru in the first place.
All I can tell you is that whenever I walk past an Apple Store these days, you can’t get in the darn place. Wobble or not, they are well positioned to keep printing money for a while.
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