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iPad Is Destroying Netbook Sales
Hugh Pickens writes "Fortune magazine reports that sales growth of low-cost, low-powered netbooks peaked last summer at an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate but netbook sales fell off a cliff in January and shrank again in April — collateral damage, according to Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty, from the January introduction and April launch of the iPad. In support of Huberty's theory, she offers a Morgan Stanley/Alphawise survey conducted in March which found that 44% of US consumers who were planning to buy an iPad said they were buying it instead of a netbook or notebook computer. In related news, Apple announced that it sold its one millionth iPad last week, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. 'One million iPads in 28 days — that's less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,' says Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. 'Demand continues to exceed supply and we're working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.'"
...I find the iPad to be a perfect web surfing device. Great for e-mail and watching video. I am actually considering selling my Macbook Pro, as it is starting to get dusty. That said, I wouldn't want to write a novel on it.
Netbooks just suck. I have a nice one (HP2140) and I hate using it.
NetBooks were always strange devices. Marginally more portable than a laptop (although not portable enough to fit in a pocket), and a lot less powerful. Their only real advantage was their cost. They were very cheap, but since the original EeeeeeeeeeeeeePC they've gradually crept up in price and now they're just too expensive for what they are.
The iPad, in contrast, is not just a cheap laptop. It fills a distinctly different need to a laptop. I've not entirely worked out what that need is - it seems to target a market that doesn't contain me - but it's clearly not the same set of uses as a laptop.
The iPad isn't killing Netbooks, they're doing that all by themselves. The iPad is just giving people who might have bought one and never used it after the first couple of months something different to waste their money on.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
First there was no such device as a netbook. Then the geeks saw the OLPC and then they ran around, screaming "I want one of these!!!!" After some screaming, Asus thought it might be nice to sell some of these devices to geeks. Hey its about money. And then more people saw that netbooks are nice devices so they bought one. As the demand for netbooks was high the sales jumped up (because the industry suddenly provided a portable product which was very much needed by many people). Now most of those people who want a netbook have a netbook and so the sales are going back. Also there was/is a financial crisis going on. And while the crisis more or less hit the public in the US very quickly it took some time to have an affect countries with "social backup systems".
So in short: It is not a falling of a cliff it is just the end of a peak. And yes, as already mentioned, there are no really cheap netbooks anymore.
Hence the ipod touch?
Jonathanjk.com
Well, I just bought a Samsung netbook.
I needed a lightweight, long battery life device mainly for better browsing than a smartphone while travelling. I like to be able to type emails on a proper(ish) keyboard, same for web forums.
I do a lot of photography and the 250GB harddrive is ideal to back up my compact flash cards and quick preview my shots - I used to use a dedicated Epson view for that.
It has HyperSpace, which is a boot option that takes you into a cut down linux system - it boots faster, uses less battery and is therefore a handy option when all you want is to browse.
Initial thoughts are that it's not that quick, but I also ordered a 1GB upgrade and when that arrives it should improve the Windows 7 performance (yes, Windows. Suits me. Sorry). Battery life seems good - I reckon the 11hrs quoted might be ambitious, but my experience so far says I should get 8 or 9 from normal use, including WiFi. Sticking a 3G USB dongle on will probably drain it quite a bit quicker...
It was also under £300.
Absolutely no reason I'd want an iPad.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Desktop computers and laptops are designed to be workstations. The iPad was designed to be a toy, and that's how most people use it. That's how Apple markets it, and that's why people buy it.
What Apple and Steve Jobs realised very early in the game is that Americans have a lot of money to spend on toys that look good. Even though most Americans spend their day using computers for work or entertainment, that doesn't make them geeks. They don't need significant computing power, create very little content and only use a very small set of hardware and software resources that are available to them.
The remarkable thing is that most Americans are wealthy enough to spend $500 to buy an iPad. And even though most people could save that money and use it to buy something more useful later, they will spend it on discretionary purchases if the product is considered fashionable enough.
Netbooks just suck. That's why no one's buying them anymore. It's not because of the iPad.
We have a hard time justifying buying an inferior tiny product that you can barely see, which can't really do that much, especially when almost everyone already has a laptop or desktop which works just fine.
The iPad is successful with people because it provides a big huge screen which is great for lying in bed or sitting out on the patio relaxing with. While this is possible with a laptop, the iPad is much more conducive to a more relaxed environment (the ads for the thing were spot on in my opinion).
Also it does have a longer battery life than a standard laptop. Laptops tend to chew through batteries way too fast these days.
...with help from notebooks.
When netbooks came on the scene, they were dirt cheap. Sure, they could do less than a notebook, but, again, they were dirt cheap, they were small, and battery life was good. Just what you needed for Web browsing and light productivity work. Oh yeah, and they were dirt cheap, easily several hundred less than most notebooks except that once-in-a-blue-moon sale you might run across.
However, this didn't last. Companies started cramming more and more into these things, which drove the price up. In and of itself, that might have been OK, but notebook prices started coming down, and they offered more features. They were bigger, but you could do more with them, and I really believe that a significantly lower price is what drove netbook sales, not merely their size. So, people could spend maybe $250-$300 for a netbook, or, if they caught a sale, they could spend $350 for a basic notebook, which offered much more bang for the buck. That's what killed netbook sales, IMHO.
A friend of mine has one that I got a chance to try out. It's an interesting little device - I'm not going to get one, but then, it's not meant for me.
The iPad does notably excel in one simple thing that I have been missing for the past few years. It has no interface lag. My phone? When I'm switching screens, it lags for a couple seconds. My two year old laptop I got fed up with and threw out because the power jack kept breaking? Opening a directory took a noticable amount of time. Even my streamlined, power-user, performance gaming desktop has moments where its trying to access things and it chugs along before giving me any feedback.
The iPad's interface is responsive. It does what you want it to, when you want it to. When you drag an icon around, it responds immediately. When you poke at a link, it responds instantly with feedback - the webpage might take a moment to load, but it lets you know it's heard you immediately. And everything else in the environment remains responsive. You access the dropdowns, they come right down. You hit the 'menu' button, and you don't get 'the application is waiting to close' hourglass or anything like that, you get MENU.
I can see how that would appeal to many consumers in a world of stuttering, jerky computers.
Discussing this one in the office, the esteemed Kevin Thompson said,
"It could be good for the netbook market when all of those people buy an iPad and realize they can't do [expletive] go and buy a netbook to replace it."
Apple's training users to appreciate a convenience size... yet almost completely failing to provide for content production as well as content consumption.
The quoted Morgan Stanley figures say 44% are buying an iPad instead of. That's 56% who aren't, who wouldn't be buying anything else. Many users will stay with Apple... but how many users have Apple converted to the size of ultra portables yet let down enough on content production that they'll move back in to, and enlarge, the general netbook market?
Yeah, I've been questioning the whole "netbook" classification lately. What set netbooks apart form notebooks was that they sacrificed a lot of functionality to make the cheapest, lightest, smallest thing capable of browsing the Internet (on a screen big enough that you didn't have to zoom in/out the way cell phones do). Now they're generally cheap ultraportable laptops.
Which is fine. Whatever. But "netbook" just seems like a marketing term now. They're small laptops made as cheaply as possible, but you can't call them tiny cheap laptops.
Apple's counting technique for 28 days is curious considering their presale period. The iPhone did not have a presale period nor did Apple produce sufficient stock to meet demand. iPhones remained out of stock for quite a while after launch while iPads can be seen in stores already. Had Apple executed with the iPhone like it has with the iPad it's not clear there would be a difference.
In fact, Asus makes a nice convertible netbook/tablet that is cheaper than the iPad, has 10 times the storage, a faster processer, a webcam, I can install whatever software I want, it runs Flash, has more RAM, has a full keyboard built-in when I want it, etc. etc. etc.
If I can get that at $450, why would I want to spend so much more for far less functionality?
Oh, the i-before the name!
I have used an asus 100he for a little over a year and love it. I have been wanting an e-reader for a while but the limitations on them and the ipad made me look elsewhere. I got an Asus t91mt netpad for less than $500. Its got a 8.9" screen, 32gig ssd & 2gig of ram and runs Win7 (quite well after a lot of tweaking). Plugged into an external monitor at work with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse it replaced my 1000he (which replaced my destop) just fine. It surf the web, OpenOffice runs like a champ, VLC plays video and Adobe Reader lets me read book. Have not tried Kindle for the PC yet.
1 million iPads in 30 days versus 20 million netbooks from dozens of nameless, faceless vendors in 365 days.
iPad sales have plateaued, but I wouldn't be surprised that by the end of the year, that number starts to approach 2 million.
Compared to any given Netbook product this year, the iPad will outsell it by a wide margin.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You guys joke, but I have actually dated women that were known for winning modeling contests, and they always seemed more needy. The women who are used to getting attention all the time get worried and needy when they dont get the attention suddenly because you have to work or you have a personal project you want to finish, and it makes them worry and fear and as the wise Yoda once said, that leads to anger and general b*tch*ness in the end. Granted you can usually catch these sort of women on the way down into depression and get them in the emo "I will try anything to get my self esteem back" phase - its usually worth a week or two of good times until they start feeling better - but really on the other side of the coin I have found that women who don't get attention all the time are usually more happy and easier to spend time with for long amounts of time after the fun is over, and they are generally more appreciative of the time and effort you put into the relationship.
- d
Yeah, I agree.
Slashdoters may be smart folk, but as for predicting what technology will become established, we have a pretty bad track record. Especially concerning Apple.
My two leading theories are:
1) Slashdot is a very skewed sample of the general population, but like most skewed samples, thinks it is typical.
2) Slashdotters secretly have a crush on Apple and want to take it behind the firehouse and get it pregnant.
No idea which is the truth.
I don't buy that for a minute. So Apple's sold a million iPads. Whee. According to this article, there were 33.3 million netbooks sold last year.
It cracks me up when reports like this come out and everyone starts screaming about how Apple's taking over. No they're not. They're not close. They've never been close. They'll never be close. It's not what "everyone wants." The million people who will buy any stupid goddamn thing Apple sells bought iPads. Those million people are by no means "the general public." So in short, who the hell cares? In consumer electronics, a million units hardly even registers on the scale.
Let's play with the data a little bit. Let's assume for the sake of conversation that iPad sales continue at this rate. I don't think they will, but let's go with it. In three months, they've sold a million. By year's end, that makes four million. Four million units is roughly 12% of the netbooks sold last year. I don't know what your definition of "taking over" is, but in my book that doesn't cut it.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!