Apple iPad On The Verge Of Losing Tablet Market Control

Recent survey shows Android tablets growing to majority

The Apple iPad is a desirable device that has set the bar very high for all the other competitors in the tablet market. There current screen resolution is what everyone else is trying to achieve. And it is because of the quality of the product, Apple has pretty much controlled the market. But there are glimpses that there is a change afoot where Apple may be losing their leadership position in the world of tablets. And it is all because of Android and the 7 inch market segment.

Based on a very recent market study by Pew Internet & American Life Project, things are changing. They were measuring ownership and usage of tablets by adults in the US. In the comparison between 2011 and 2012, there are some obvious shifts in the information. One of the startling numbers produced is that 68% of those surveyed purchased their tablet in the last year. That number tells you just how fast things are changing. And they are going to continue to change.

In the Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, the startling number is the difference in market share between 2011 and 2012. In 2011, Apple pretty much controlled the market with a share of 81% in July. That shows the power that the iPad had. Android had a 15% share and everyone else had a 4% share. The Blackberry PlayBook is lost in that 4% share. Things looked very good for Apple.

But then things seem to be looking different for the future. Amazon announced and then released their 7 inch Kindle Fire before the holidays. And the sales took off. Barnes and Noble release their Nook Tablet which has been doing a decent job with sales. All of this after the previous survey results. Now we come forward to the July 2012 results and see a shift in the share. The iPad has dropped from 81% to 52% and that does not look good for Apple retaining control. The Android tablets grew from 15% to 48% and that is likely to increase significantly with the next survey. All the other tablets, such as the Blackberry PlayBook are not even showing up in the results.

This does not look good for Apple. And to make the situation even worse for them, these results were provided before 2 key events. The first was the release of the Nexus 7 from Google. The other was the announcement of the Kindle Fire HD. Both of these tablets are going to have an impact on the market share that Apple has. And they are both a 7 inch tablet, which is smaller than the current iPad.

The only potential to slow the slide would be for Apple to release the iPad Mini, At the moment, that is only a rumored device with no confirmation from Apple. The most current rumor has Apple sending out invites on October 10th with the official announcement happening on October 17th. If the rumored pricing is correct in the range of $249 to $299, Apple could retain some of what we expect them to lose. If they hit the $200 price point, they could make a big splash in the market and take back the majority share.

All of this looks to be inevitable for Apple and even with the release of the 7.85 iPad Mini, there are just too many competitors out there for them to keep up. It is like the iPhone as compared to Android smart phones. There is just no way they can stop the growing tide from over taking them.

Whether you prefer Apple's iPad to the Android tablets, the Android tablets probably have already taken the majority share. That is unless the iPad Mini comes out as rumored.

Apple iPad Problems Stacking Up

Problems with the new iPad just seem to keep popping up in the news

Since the release of the latest Apple iPad, it seems that one problem after another has been reported and is not looking good for Apple. In some respects, it reminds one of problems when companies push something out too quickly and then have to spend time cleaning up the problems. That is in the the public eye and Apple historically has delivered very good hardware and software which has become the standard for many in the industry. Could it be that the are losing that stature?

Heating iPads

One of the more publicized problems with the iPad has been the heat which it generates. The reports are many and one of the most damming is one from Consumer Reports where they found the new iPad operating at temperatures of up to 116 degrees while playing games. This is in direct opposition to statements by Apple. Those statements, as reported by All Things D, have Apple saying that the iPad is "Operating well within our thermal specifications". Whether 116 degrees is operating within "thermal specifications" is for others to speak to. But with that heat, you do feel it if it is on your lap. While it may not be much worse than some laptops, coming from Apple is a surprise.

Not Charging While Playing Games

There are reports where the iPad is not charging when playing games and it is really much bigger than that. It appears that any CPU intensive app which is running, including most games, will not continue to charge the iPad while the CPU intensive processes are going on. During those time, the battery is being drained just as fast as it is being charged. Thus a stalemate and the status quo of the battery remains as is. It could be worse and the battery continues to drain, but the issue of having a charger attached and not having the battery life increasing is a concern.

Other Battery Replated Items

From Information Week comes reports of problems with charging the battery on the new iPad. One item says that if the iPad is connected to a USB 2.0 port, it will not charge. If you are using your new iPad while the charger is plugged in, it charges very slowly if at all.

In another report from 9 to 5 Mac, they are reporting problems with the charging of the battery. It appears that after the battery indicator shows 100%, that the iPad continues to charge the battery. According to the article, once you see the 100% indicator, it takes another hour to completely charge the iPad. Could this be due to the much larger battery?

WiFi Problems

There are reports of WiFi problems on the latest iPad as well. Complaints about WiFi issues have been growing and were also part of issues with the iPad 2. It seems that the connectivity issues this time around are worse than with previous models. While the iPhone 4S is not having these issues, the new iPad is. This is primarily related to signal strength and the dropping of signals. Either of these make it problematic to use.

LTE And Excessive Data Usage

While not directly an Apple problem, there are growing complaints of people exceeding their data plans while using the iPad's 4G LTE data connection. Streaming comes with almost no effort and in a matter of days, you can use up an entire months worth of your data plan. These reports are growing, but the big one is going to be when owners get their wireless bills. That is when many are going to find out about overage charges on the new tiered data plans which AT&T and Verizon are offering. That is going to become the big store by the end of May.

In Summary

While some issues can be fixed with software updates, some of these cannot. The one item which is not easily fixed is that of reputation. While having a great reputation for releasing quality products, the latest iPad product is threatening Apple's long standing reputation. There are other complaints related to the iPad and some not directly impacting the iPad but part of bigger issues. The latest one is iTunes downloads where anything larger than 15 MB is resulting in an error. It is the growing list of issues which really seems to indicate that Apple released this product before it was ready.

What do you think?

Amazon Invades The Tablet Market

Tablet Trending

For all of 2010 and 2011, Apple has been in total control of the tablet market share around the globe and there has not been a significant challenger which could be taken seriously. That is until Amazon made a decision to enter the marketplace. Prior to that, all of the other tablet manufacturers were not seen as a threat to Apple and their dominance of the market which they created. There were many who were seeing 2011 as being the year of the tablet, but that has definitely not been the case and it is starting to look like 2012 may become the Year of the Tablet. With the entry of Amazon and their Kindle Fire, they have invaded an area which has been dominated by Apple and are now threatening that dominance.

Amazon had zero market share when they entered the 4th quarter of 2011 and went from nothing to having a 14% market share in not even a full quarter. Shipping 3.9 million Kindle Fire tablets beginning in November, they have grabbed a sizable market share, though there a some who believe they are not going to impact the iPad. That view is short sided as Amazon has found the one area which a majority of consumers seem to be interested in and that is price. By coming to market with a $199 tablet, they have broken the previous market model which had everything beginning at $399 and up. That has forever changed and now everyone has to look at where the market is going in relation to a $199 price line. Continuing rumors of a smaller iPad show just how much things have changed and how believable a smaller & cheaper iPad could be.

One would think that Samsung would have a far better market share than they currently do, especially considering the way that Apple has been trying to get injunctions against Samsung in countries around the world. With what appears to be their tablet of the month club, Samsung has been announcing tablet after tablet trying to find the spot where consumers look at Samsung as the first choice. With only 8% of the market share and behind Amazon, they have their work cut out for them. This again points to the idea of a cheaper tablet as being the way of the future to generate tablet sales.

Amazon is rumored to be working on an 8.9 inch tablet and a 10 inch tablet. If those rumors are accurate and they deliver larger sizes with the aggressive pricing that they did on the Kindle Fire, there could be another market shift where Amazon moves up to 30% market share in the 3rd or 4th quarter. If that were to happen, Apple would lose their greater than 50% market share and be seen as a big problem. If there is a way for Apple to prevent that from happening, it would be with the iPad Mini which has been rumored. If not, the current trending looks like Apple is going to continue to lose market share.

What do you think? Is Apple in danger of losing their current control of the tablet market?




The above chart comes from Statista.com

New iPad : How Everyone Missed The Name

Now that Apple has made the formal announcement this morning for the latest version of the iPad, many are going to be talking about what it contains or does not contain based on all the rumors which have been circulating over the past several months. Some of the rumors, such as the "Retina Display" were spot on in their accuracy while some others were close but not right on the mark. As an example, the A5X processor versus the A6 processor. Those are going to be talked about for weeks, if not months, regarding this latest version of the iPad. Apple has already put up a page comparing the new iPad to the now previous version on their web site. Twitter is flowing with Tweets about the latest iPad. Articles are being written, such as the failure on the part of Apple to include Siri which resulted in so much success for the iPhone 4S. These comments and debates will be with us for a some time. So many will be playing the "Monday morning quarterback" analyzing what Apple did right and what they did wrong.

The one thing that everyone missed in the rumor mill was the name. No one guessed that it would be simply called the iPad. Respected publications are still calling it the iPad 3, such as PC World among a list of others. How could everyone miss the name change and in a lot of cases continue to call it the iPad 3 hours after the formal announcement by Apple? That is something that is confounding. There was the well recognized name of the iPad 3. The rumors about the name being changed to the iPad HD because of the retina display were circulated by many as what it would be called and some are still using term. Some of those who were claiming the name to be the iPad HD or believed it would be include:

• Venture Beat


• The Washington Post


• CNet News


• Mashable Tech

And this is just a few of the many sources which seems to have believed that the coming iPad would be called the iPad HD. There was a majority of people who believed that it would be labeled as the iPad 3, the natural successor to the iPad 2. How could everyone be wrong? I have not found any leaks of the name "iPad" and no one was reporting a name other than the iPad HD or the iPad 3. It makes you wonder how everyone could have missed the change in the name so completely.

Now the debate begins as to why the iPad does not have a specific label assigned to it so that it represents the current model. It has already started with posts from CNN as to why the iPad does not have a name. Or the the New York Times talking about how it is puzzling experts. It seems that it is a marketing mistake to not provide a unique name for a product.

"It's just 'iPad.' It's what it is."

As to how everyone could have missed the mark on the change, we can chalked that one up to Apple. Their ability to keep things secret and control the leaks which then turn into rumors is one that continues to confound journalists. Why Apple has chosen to create the simple name will also confound journalists for quite a while. What are they going to call the next iPad they release? As for now, the name is the iPad. This will undoubtedly create confusion for consumers and there is nothing to stop Apple from calling it the iPad HD or iPad 3 in the coming weeks. But for now, the name is just simply the iPad.