Slashdot Mirror
Heavy US Demand Delays iPad's Worldwide Release
Dave Knott writes "The international launch of the iPad has been delayed until late May, a one month setback from the original launch window of late April. Citing Apple's press release: 'Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.' International pricing will be announced on May 10, at which time international pre-orders are expected to begin."
Microsoft spends almost twice as much as Apple as a percentage of revenue on marketing. Apple spends about the same amount as Dell.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/10/28/apples-2009-ad-budget-half-a-billion/
Could it be that people actually want products that you don't?
iPad sales dropped down to ~10%
Well, at least they're right about exceeding sales expectations. That's way more than I expected anyone to buy.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Another iCrap stories. Don't ever stop.
Microsoft has 4 to 5 times the amount of products apple does and a much higher profit margin as they don't ship hardware, would be far wierder if they didn't spend at least double what apple do.
You know, if you really cared about tablet computers, you could have gotten one a decade ago. It's not like Apple is opening a new market here that competitors need to rush into. So after a delay of 10 years, it's not like another few months will really convince anyone to go with one of the other devices.
Qxe4
I work for a predominate Apple authorised reseller in Australia in an engineering role, as a result I get to hear feedback from every corner of the landscape. From consumer sales, small business, big business, government and educational.
The iPad, and just the talk around it, I have never experienced in my 7+ years in the I.T. industry, and 3+ years in the Apple industry.
I have no hesitation in saying that the iPad has a huge chance of being the game changer, it's launch officially brings the "PC" into being a commodity device that anyone can use.
Hell, just today with my desk behind our retail sales floor. I've had an old lady come in enquiring about pre-ordering it, just so she can check her email in Cambodia. Schools are talking about it, business is talking about it, but the most surprising thing is that the older generation, the type of folk who see computers as these big, ugly, hard machines to use are not just wanting them, they are consistently calling us each and every day to find out the latest news on them.
Apple will sell these things like absolute hot cakes, and the rest of the I.T. industry is going to be left scratching their heads as to why they didn't come up with this idea sooner.
But... Slashdot has already declared the iPad a failure!
#DeleteChrome
Yes, there really was no announcement on release date before Apple said they will be delaying it. Marketing at its finest.
Well here in Australia they where saying it would be released at the end of April, it has now been changed to late May.
Wow, you would really have to be blinded to not see through this.
Every other Apple product release in the past they have done exactly the same thing.
I'll eat my hat if the same PR isn't released during the next Apple product release.
And the last interesting point - iPad sales dropped down to ~10% after first day sales.
They sold 300K the first day, including all the pre-orders, then about 50K every day thereafter, according to the published numbers from Apple. So more than 10% of the first day, but I guess I don't see the relevance. Since market researchers are showing it is sold out in many stores, so constrained supply limits sales in some cases and reduced demand in others. Until they start to keep up with the demand, we won't really know what that demand is like. By the same logic as you've presented you could claim the Wii was going to be a failure since after the first day sales dropped dramatically. Actually, the numbers are slightly lower (500K vs. 600K), but close to that of the iPhone when it was released. To claim the iPad as a success or failure at this point, especially because of the distribution of sales is, well, premature.
...because Microsoft knows what people will reasonably buy?
Windows and Office are Microsoft's biggest money-makers, so they correspondingly have the most advertising.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Here are a few press releases before this press release:
March 5th, UK - End of April launch http://www.nma.co.uk/news/apple-announces-april-uk-release-date-for-ipad/3010816.article
March 5th, European release - End of April launch http://www.cln-online.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=612:ipadrelease&catid=40:industry&Itemid=135
In a post below you said you'd eat your hat. Can you post that on youtube? Thanks.
Suffice to say, we can probably get 3-4 rounds from these same people....maybe a USB port for the 3rd go round? Boy, will they lap THAT up...."
" For round 4.....we'll rumor Flash compatibility, but not deliver it, of course.....we'll please the masses with a custom Steve Jobs signature edition, complete with virtual-arrogance, and disdain for all things with pre-emptive multitasking! "
Microsoft spends almost twice as much as Apple as a percentage of revenue on marketing. Apple spends about the same amount as Dell.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/10/28/apples-2009-ad-budget-half-a-billion/
Could it be that people actually want products that you don't?
I considered this, but it's just not likely. I mean, I can't see why they'd want it.
--Obyron
Exactly. You can sell Ice to Eskimo's. You just need to value add! Look! Yellow snowcones. What?!? It's lemon!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
This reminds me of when GUI's were new in the mid 80's, all the elitist jerks who fancied themselves to be high-caliber nerds loudly proclaiming that it was all a gay bullshit fad, etc., ad nauseum. Lemme ask you guys, any chance we'll get a humble redaction if it turns out you are completely and utterly wrong about this?
Facebook is the new AOL
I did get one a decade ago. It sucked. All the ones I've had running Windows or Linux sucked. I've considered a Mac-based one but I expect it'd suck. Why? Because desktop OSs are crap and are triple crap for a tablet. Also without good multitouch, small form factors, good battery life, and wireless tablets are crap.
If you've never noticed that EVERY desktop environment available is crap then you've obviously never used a computer or helped anyone else use a computer. iPhone OS is still pretty lacking but it's better than any version of Windows, Mac OS, KDE, Gnome, etc that I've used. I have seen some stabs at a netbook environment that were moving in the right direction too but they all were still more concept than reality. Keep the OS simple and let applications provide whatever level of complexity is needed to complete a given task. As iPhone, Android/Chrome, etc move towards a task/document centric approach instead of application centric and find the right middle ground for safe/easy versus flexible I think we'll all be a lot happier.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I brought my iPad to D&D Encounters tonight because my daughter had to come with due to my wife's previous commitment.
My daughter loves the Adobe Ideas app (she just knows it's the blue pencil icon) because it's easier to draw with and choose colors with than the other two drawing/sketching apps I have on there. She kept going back to listen to the book apps she'd already listened to a couple times that evening (Toy Story and Dr. Seuss ABCs and Alice). Her favorite is Diner Dash even though she keeps losing at the last level I mastered.
The entire D&D session was almost derailed by uber nerds wanting to use and/or talk about my iPad instead of playing D&D.
After that encounter and after my wife picked up my daughter after my wife's salon appointment (I know! what a fucking cliche, right?) I ended up having a long conversation about Apple and why I pre-ordered an iPad.
My takeaway was the only people buying and using netbooks, and the people who most want an iPad, are people who are a most perfect fit for either an iPad or a MacBook.
As someone who uses OpenBSD from a command line for most of my professional life and who turns to Apple as soon as my time is my own, I have to say I think most of the Apple hate amongst the fellow nerds here is just jealousy.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Exactly. You can sell Ice to Eskimo's. You just need to value add! Look! Yellow snowcones. What?!? It's lemon!
If Apple sold lemonade-flavored snow cones, here is how Slashdot would react:
"Oh please, people have been making yellow snow cones for years!"
"You can't eat with unless you have a special cup for it! (Well I don't know if that's actually true but it sounds plausible!)"
"I've never tried one, but I know they're not actually sweet! Steve Jobs just told them to like it! Sugar is just a marketing term they made up."
"If you go to the Kwik-E-Mart you can get other flavors, too. If you look hard enough, you can even buy them from your neighbor's kids from their stand down the street! They don't taste as good, the quality is not as consistent, and the coloring will run down your sleeve, but you have choice!"
"Heaps and heaps of people only by them so they can show off their yellow mustaches!"
... etc.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It seems strange to be so self-righteous about marketing, in a forum on a site that is basically a big community PR platform for VA Linux. It might seem like it fosters open debate, but overall the selection of issues and the guidance in the summaries is strongly tilted toward facilitating dialogue about how awesome Linux and the GNU interpretation of open source are, with a regular diet of Apple/science/general tech stories to draw in new readers.
Everybody markets, and you are constantly acting under marketing's influence. Marketing's awesome! You saw the TRON trailer, right? That's marketing.
You're wearing denim jeans right now, right? Marketing.
You may fancy yourself an expert on a few things, capable of making objective decisions, but in most aspects of your spending life, I assure you, you're responding to very basic stimuli induced on you by marketers. And it's completely legal, legitimate, fair, and even necessary.
This continuing slashdot obsession with disqualifying goods (from any manufacturer) because they're well-marketed is bizzare.
You shouldn't be asking why Apple is so effective at marketing... Apple is merely competent. You really should ask yourself, why, if HP and Dell have such good products, they invariable allow their products to be introduced as blurry pictures on Gizmodo or Ars Technica, give them unrememberable names, and are so inept in their follow through and promotion that anybody who actually cares to develop or add value to their product might as well blow their brains out now and save the trouble.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Mobile phones and computers are sold over many millions a day.
Dell sells 365 million laptops a year?!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
People might take you seriously if you stopped creating posts exclaiming, "Your math fails", then writing (300+4*500) = 600000.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
It's only interesting that just today, along with this news announcement, was the first time when we (as in Europeans) even heard about it or when EU operators even announced iPad coming and its release dates.
Except that's not true. Apple announced that the iPad would begin worldwide availability late April.
Yes, there really was no announcement on release date before Apple said they will be delaying it. Marketing at its finest.
No, they really did. Your post is ignorance at its finest.
And the last interesting point - iPad sales dropped down to ~10% after first day sales.
I assume you mean down to about 10% per day, which is a number much lower than I've heard, but regardless of the specifics, this is exactly what always happens. There's the initial rush (including pre-orders from a month ago), then things settle down to a more sustainable level of demand.
There's also the little matter of Apple not being able to keep the iPad fully stocked, which places an upper limit on sales numbers.
Instead of trying to spin reality completely backwards, why not admit that the iPad isn't the dud you and those who mod you up thought it would be? What's wrong with admitting the truth? Is your technological self-esteem so insecure that it must be propped up by hiding reality lest... Lest what? Will your Windows PC or Ubuntu netbook or Android tablet serve you any less well if you admit that there are many other people out there that prefer the iPad to *your* device of choice?
Apple - PR and Advertising.
And profitability and shipping millions of products per year. Apple is the fifth largest PC maker in the US, and that includes businesses which skew much more heavily towards Windows PCs. Even then, Apple sells 8% of all computers in America.
That does not support your "PR and Advertising" smoke and mirrors claim. There's substance to back up their flair. Unlike your incessant posting of ignorance on all things Apple.
If Apple sold lemonade-flavored snow cones, here is how Slashdot would react:
But there would also be a new article about them every day for a month. :D
It is what it is.
There are over 100,000 iPhone apps out now. According to you, this would mean there are one million Windows Mobile apps (your 10 times). Do you honestly believe that?? I sure as hell don't :)
PR stunts aside, I'm not surprised by this at all. Living as I do in New Zealand I can get PC hardware no problems, but if I have to buy a Mac for someone it's like pulling teeth. There's plenty of Apple resellers about touting the latest wares, but try actually buying say a MacBook Pro and you'll be lucky to see it before two weeks. If it's a recent-release you're looking at closer to six weeks. Not that it bothers me since I don't personally use nor encourage Apple products, but occasionally I have to do purchasing for work.
I'm pretty sure we're near the bottom of the distribution chain, with the US at the top. Does anyone know of the official distribution hierarchy?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Nur...
He was talking % of revenue, not total spend in $, so number of product is not relevent.
Try responding to a comment you understand next time, and who could mod you as interesting?
Every other Apple product release in the past they have done exactly the same thing.
You mean the other products that really were such successes that supply was constrained?
Unlike other makers Apple doesn't stuff the channel (see: Palm. Sigh.) , they try to build only what they estimate they will sell. So when they underestimate, they run out.
So to say they are doing the same thing is correct, but not your odd assertion this is some kind of marketing move. People are coming to Apple with money and Apple is having to send them away, never a great thing for a company to have to do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, first they expect to sell 700k on the first day: (link to "The Street")
But actually they sell 300k (insert link to Apples press release)
How is "The Street" a spokesman for Apple? Apple never gave any estimates, so you have two totally different "theys" you claim to be catching in a restatement.
But then, I'd expect nothing less than embarrassingly misleading points from card-carrying Apple Hater.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can you not understand the concern that Apple's strategy if successful will leave them with more of a stranglehold on mobile computing than Microsoft ever had on the desktop?
Nope. Not even a little.
Because you have not thought through what happens if it's not Apple with the "stranglehold" you predict.
Apple may lock down products. BUT they do not are about hackers (they could thwart jailbreaking if they really wanted to). And they build a lot of things atop a lot of open standards - they have one of the better HTML 5 supporting mobile browsers (which they support to everyone's benefit by helping out Webkit), they have strong support for GCC and now future compiling technologies like llvm, and of course there's the BSD kernel stuff they use of the fact they ship full computers with Apache and perl and ruby and bash included.
So that's worst case, that that company has a "stranglehold" and demand the market use open standards to interoperate.
What is the alternative? Microsoft. Microsoft and more Microsoft, with Microsoft only twists on standards you have to adopt. Boo to that, I say.
You fantasy world where we boil away Microsoft and Apple cannot exist. So I choose to support giving a company an upper hand that actually supports open standards for real.
The benefit of that is, that it's very unlikely we'll see a true "stranglehold" the way Microsoft was able to execute things. Because when you are competing in a standards based world you tend to end up with at least a few viable competitors at any given moment.
As for the iPad/iPhone in particular, inside it's still UNIX as I can see from programming for it. Heck, I'm using GDB daily to debug it... and being a geek, that likes UNIX, at any moment I have the power to use UNIX tools directly on the device if I so choose. What's so bad about a world where everything works pretty well for people that don't care about the internals, but that truly technical people can get deep inside of of they choose?
the idea that opposition to the iPad is primarily "jealousy" is silly
Not from reading the plethora of extremely childish (and churlish) comments on Slashdot for just about any Apple story. For people that don't like Apple they sure do like to talk about how they don't like Apple.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You do realize that a PC *is* a commodity device that anyone can use, right?
Your definition is basically: anyone can have one and type into it. That's what you MEANT.
But what you SAID is - "anyone can USE".
And that is simply wrong. Not just ANYONE can USE a Windows computer, certainly not a Windows tablet which takes an extra level of geekery to grok the oddnesses of.
The key is USE. For many years the industry has failed on the front despite things like WebTV and Windows Home Edition and Bob, which generations now of computer geeks have had to help maintain or set up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you saying that Apple will sell as many iPads in the next 10 days as it did on the huge first day? I don't think Apple has a problem with that.
300,000 in 10 days = 10,950,000 per year. Of one iPad model only, and in the USA only. That would mean at least 25 million total sales worldwide per year. Netbook and notebook makers should be very, very frightened.
In bizarre move Israel Ministry of Truth... err Communications banned iPad. Custom officials already confiscating iPads at airport. Incompatibility with Wi-Fi standard given as the reason. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1162992.html
Analysts are almost universally wrong on any topic, so again you cannot give analyst numbers and claim they are Apple's. Apple has to be very careful whatever number they actually speculate on they can meet, while analysts can pull any number out of any orifice they chose with no repercussion for failure.
If you want sales estimates, currently Apple is speculating they will sell a bit over a million iPads in the first quarter. Tell us, do you think that is high or low? I predict that estimate to be on the low side based on current trends (and actually using the device), enshrine your guess for all to reflect on later.
Remember the 3G versions have not even shipped yet...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not to play semantics, but "late April" is not a "date".
But you *are* playing semantics. sopssa's point was that Apple wasn't delaying anything, because they didn't make any initial statement to begin with. Late April and late March are so different that there's no way to claim that there was no delay, which is exactly what sopssa claimed.
Stock has not been a major issue.
I never said it was a major issue, I said it had an effect. And it has.
Some stores have run out, but then gotten more a day or two later.
Exactly. In other words, some people walked into an Apple Store, and were unable to walk out with an iPad. This, by its very definition, means there's an upper limit to the number of sales which is being bumped up against. This is especially relevant as the topic was about the number of sales daily compared to those on the launch day, when stock was significantly higher than it is now.
At any rate I don't know if Apple has any supply issues or if this is just marketing, and neither do you -- but If I had to guess, I'd guess its probably just marketing.
You're absolutely wrong that this is simply marketing. It would be absurd for Apple to deliberately not have enough iPads (or hold them back in warehouses) for the sole purpose of making it look like demand is super high, because this would mean lost sale after lost sale. It would also mean that Apple is deliberately under producing (or under selling).
This absurdity would be doubly compounded by the delay to international markets. Why would Apple then parlay lost US sales into delayed foreign sales?
To be sure, there would be some benefit to have the buzz be "ooh, look, demand is so high that Apple can't keep up with it!", but to sacrifice actual sales for such hype would not only be absurd, but also illegal. Apple's shareholders would not allow 1/3rd of a quarter's sales to be completely vanish for a little bit of hype.
And contrary to common belief here on Slashdot, Apple doesn't live on empty hype. They *do* benefit from hype, but from hype that is backed up by reality. It's far more effective to have the hype of being unable to keep up with demand because demand is actually high, than it is to have it hyped up, but demand actually be low. If Apple tried the latter, the iPad would get a short-term media boost, but the market would clobber it in the long run.
There's two possibilities: It's marketing or apple *failed* to gauge the market and organize their production chain effectively.
Or they are producing them as fast as they can, and that's just not fast enough.
They've had other product launches exceeding a million units sold in the first week, so this quantity of iPad's is easily something they could handle.
Which Taiwanese factory do you know of that can churn out iPads fast enough? We're talking IPS LCDs, large glass multitouch surfaces, custom SoC, high capacity batteries (that aren't simply a bunch of AA cells shrink-wrapped together), high capacity, high speed flash memory, etc.
And they are also having to ramp up production of the 3G iPad, so units of those are accumulating for their launch.
Given everything you just said about Apple, which do you think is more likely: They dropped the ball and didn't handle the launch intelligently, or they're doing the smart thing now and trying to increase demand?
Why would they have to do something like you are suggest in order to increase demand, when demand already exceeds production?
The simple fact that far too many slashdotters can't grasp is that people actually want iPads. You clearly haven't been to an Apple Store over the past week. They are packed with people gathered around the iPads.
As it invents the extra "caché" of owning an iPad.
There's no way the demand exceeded their expectations. Maybe with the iPhone or iPod, they could have argued this. But not now.
And of course, the other half of Slashdot would spend months evangelising Apple's new revolutionary yellow snow cones which will change the way people think about snow cones forever, it'll be bigger, tastier, creamier, more nutritious, it will solve world hunger and help develop higher brain functions. Then on the day of release when they find out it's just a regular snow cone that Steve Jobs pissed on, they'll still buy them up in their thousands, all the while singing Apple's praises for how they haven't burdened the cone with features people don't want but instead have kept it simple and easy to use.
I don't think much of your research. That's from October last year. The report from the same company is widely available for Feb this year, and it has Apple on 25.4% and MS on 15.1%.
http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/4/comScore_Reports_February_2010_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share
Worldwide, they both do less well, because Symbian is still holding on ot the lion's share. Apple 15.1%, Microsoft 8.8%.
http://www.canalys.com/pr/2010/r2010021.html
Worst bet ever. Number of apps on Microsoft's own Windows Marketplace for Mobile = 872. Number of Apps on iTunes = 185,000.
Look at your finger. Does it look like a mouse to you? No? Then why did all previous tablet computers assume that people wanted to use an operating system designed for a mouse with their fingers? Just because the iPad and some crappy Windows tablet are both flat doesn't meant they're the same thing.
Apple's announcement makes it clear that they are not selling more because they can't produce them fast enough. We won't know how many they can actually sell until they manage to fill the channels.
http://www.motorola.com/Business/US-EN/Business+Product+and+Services/Mobile+Computers/Handheld+Computers
I don't know about everyone else, but this made me really want to try one of Apple's lemon snow cones.
my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
This is a pile of crap! I live in Switzerland and our electronics are way cheaper than the rest of Europe (even taking VAT into account). Having French requirements is not a big deal for a multi-national corporation.
The reason why Canada is more expensive is due to the traditional Looney US exchange rate. Corporates gouge Canadians!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
because the iPhone sold like hotcakes the fist few months and then sales went flat till Apple corrected the price. Of course after outcry they refunded some money to early buyers.
I think the iPad is a great idea with some serious setbacks, like not being viewable in sunlight easily... but the price turns me off completely. $500? Get real. Make a 16 at 299, and +100 for each doubling.
oh... and can we have a version which works outdoors in bright light please!
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
i think thats the reason why microsoft plans to keep winmob 6.5 alive, but rebranded as winphone 6.5.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
FTFY:
"It doesn't matter that people have been making yellow snow cones for years, no one started eating them until Apple came along, and they were the ones who popularised it!"
"You can't eat with unless you have a special cup for it, but that's a good thing, it makes the product better!"
"Apple make the best ones, even though I've not tried all the other ones on the market. In fact I wasn't even aware alternatives existed. If you tell me that Apple aren't the largest producer in the market and show data to back that up, I'm going to pretend it isn't true."
"It doesn't matter that the Apple ones don't taste as good, the quality is not as consistent, and the coloring will run down your sleeve - what's important is that it gives you a superior tasting experience. I can't explain how it's better, it just is, you just have to believe."
"It doesn't matter that over cones look better on paper. What's more important is that this shows off my yellow moustache."
Not to mention the absurdity that Slashdot would start covering snow cones as soon as Apple produced the iCone, even though it obviously doesn't now.
The fact that people have made phones/tablets/etc for years is worth mentioning, because so many people round here, including the coverage from Slashdot, suggests the belief that Apple really were first.
With your second comment, are you suggesting that the policies about Apple's App Store and what an Iphone can't do unless jailbroken and so on are simply made up? My sources for these claims are Apple users themselves - who insist that it's a good thing that their phone is locked down like this.
I have two words for you: Nintendo Wii. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Nintendo under-produced Wii units for at least the first two years it was on the market.
Ahh, but Nintendo did not intentionally underproduce. They underestimated demand, then did not want to invest in more plants because they assumed they would catch up with the demand and did not want to be stuck with expensive production plants when they did not need that many for the long term sustained demand.
They could have immediately started building more plants, but they wrongly assumed they had misinterpreted initial demand and failed to stockpile enough. Basically, they badly underestimated the demand in the new market segment they were entering. What's amusing is that, at the time, conspiracy theorists who were not the target market spent all sorts of effort theorizing about how it was all some sort of marketing trick and the Wii was not really in demand that much, simply because they could not understand that there was a large market demand because not everyone is just like them. Here we see the same phenomenon all over again.