Apple's iPhone Soars While The iPad Languishes

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

That may be true for basic consumer level laptops, but not for business.

I need laptops with 16GB ram, 1080p screens, and at least 1TB of storage. Plus they need to support a docking station for when the user is in the office, and they have to be built well enough to handle 3 years of travel.
That requires a business level laptop, and is going to cost well over $1000, and maybe closer to $2000 if I add a 1TB SSD, the docking station, 2nd monitor, etc.

I don't at all disagree with that. In a business enterprise, there's good reason to spend more on sturdy hardware and to future-proof with specifications and stuff. But for a home computer? Pretty much anything useful or productive works on an Atom n270 with 1GB of memory. People who buy expensive hardware and then claim they "need" it at home are just being thoughtlessly silly. But those same people also tend to overspend above their income on a lot of other things and they end up never being able to afford to retire and are a huge societal resource drain because of their lifetime of RVs, boats, overspeced computers, wasted electricity, home theaters, obesity, energy drinks, booze, production of an abundance of children, speaking with a southern accent, and so forth.

 

[MV75]

Why is this news? They have just released the new shiney, of course it's going to sell better than the old shiney. If they suddenly released a new tablet, it'll be a different story again.

 

[Ocean]

Im still with an ipad 3.
Battery is fine, retina screen is fine, ios is fine. No fingerprint sensor or airdrop, but meh.
I was hoping for a 12.9 inch ipad to convince me to upgrade.

Give me a mobile for connectivity, a portable for lounging media consumption, and a desktop for gaming and deep productivity.

 

[Draax]

My 6 is quite the leap ahead of my old 4S, enjoying it so far.

 

[m heisty]

Forgot to add, iPads are built like tanks so the reason to upgrade reduces significantly.

Seriously? My cousin dropped one on a wood floor from about a foot up and it shattered the screen.

 

[m heisty]

Why is this news? They have just released the new shiney, of course it's going to sell better than the old shiney. If they suddenly released a new tablet, it'll be a different story again.

It's a year over year report. So that's how it's news. If last year at this point you sold 10 widgets and then this year you sold 7. That's pretty big news.

 

[Ashbringer]

For what it costs the Surface Pro probably sells pretty well for an x86 device. Microsoft releases numbers this Thursday which will be the first full quarter of availability for the SP3 so we should have some idea how the SP3 is doing though Microsoft doesn't release unit sales numbers but only revenue.

I really doubt an overpriced tablet is going to sell well. I really don't know why so many people here praise the Surface Pros so much when for that price you could get a 1080P laptop with a i5, 1080P display, dedicated GPU, and real storage for the same price as the lowest grade Surface Pro.

The surface pro has an IPS screen, 1/3 the weight, and that's it. To me, having a high resolution for a 12inch screen seems pointless.

However overall the Windows tablet market is probably doing better than the iPad since over the last year Bay Trail has come online which is remarkable improvement in x86 low cost/power platforms coupled with free Windows for smaller tablets and even larger devices with Windows with Bing.

The main issue with iPad, Surface Pro, and Android devices is their storage or lack of. This causes a huge problem for software developers which prevents them from creating larger and more powerful applications. But this is also why the sales of tablets are slowing down. As nice as SSD's are, they can't possible hold the data of modern consumers. Pretty obvious that Microsoft, Google, and Apple want their users to move onto cloud storage, but with data caps and slow speed along with spotty connections it's not a reality.

Make things worse most of these devices have no SD card slot. So if you have a 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB tablets, the storage is not enough. Especially for the Surface Pro which it's main attraction is running legacy Windows applications, and not Modern UI apps. Even something like playing a game requires nowadays 50GB, which gaming is obviously not the purpose of the device. Windows 8 requires 20GB of free space just to function.

Just to give you an idea of how screwed modern devices are, a Samsung Galaxy S2 released in early 2011 has 16 GB or 32 GB of internal storage with a SD card with up to 64 GB SDXC. SSD storage is nice but the prices need to drastically fall and storage needs to drastically increase. Also put in a SD card slot, there's really no reason not to have one. Otherwise off to buy a laptop.

 

[Mr. Snrub]

I really doubt an overpriced tablet is going to sell well. I really don't know why so many people here praise the Surface Pros so much when for that price you could get a 1080P laptop with a i5, 1080P display, dedicated GPU, and real storage for the same price as the lowest grade Surface Pro.

The surface pro has an IPS screen, 1/3 the weight, and that's it. To me, having a high resolution for a 12inch screen seems pointless

You're missing the point. The portability of a Surface Pro 3 is huge for people who are constantly traveling. That's a great laptop at a great price point, but the target market is different from the target market that the Surface Pro 3 is going for.

Your business travelers aren't going to want to lug around a 6lb laptop when they can take a 2lb hybrid (with the type cover) wherever they go. Anybody who has ever had to support these people can tell you that. The price premium is worth it in that scenario and it may even be worth it for people who just want the thinnest and lightest machine they can get. There's plenty of power in it for a variety of tasks.

 

[raz-0]

iPad airs and similarly speced android tablets are amazing as a beginner device, media centric thing that you need to check email on and netflix. But if limitless productivity is required nothing beats a SPro. All the win of MS regardless of having wifi or data.

Agreed 100%, and for similar functionality, the $100-200 price difference in androids benefit is very compelling.