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iPad Isn't "Killing" Netbook Sales, According To Paul Thurrott
mantis2009 writes "Paul Thurrott, the prolific technology analyst and Windows expert, reacts strongly to an article highlighted on Slashdot. Thurrott takes numbers from IDC and the Wall Street Journal, indicating that netbook sales have not in any meaningful way been affected by sales of Apple's tablet computer, the iPad. Money quote: '[N]etbooks and sub-12-inch machines will sell 45.6 million units in 2011 and 60.3 million in 2013. If I remember the numbers from 2009, they were 10 percent of all PCs, or about 30 million units. Explain again how the iPad will beat that. Please. Even the craziest iPad sales predictions are a small percentage of that.'"
Didn't they sell a million of them last month? That's about 25% of netbook sales (48million in a year would be about 4 million a month). That doesn't sound like a small fraction to me.
To be fair, though, the idea that sales were affected was based on asking people what they were going to buy, not what they already bought. People talk a lot of crap. So it's best to ignore what they say and concentrate on what they do. Not many people are going to not buy a netbook because of an iPad, because they satisfy different markets. Netbooks are great for people who want to throw a small pc in a bag and have access to the net, type emails etc on the go. iPads are great for..well...uh..say you wanted an expensive, easy to scratch laptop but wanted to have to hold it awkwardly all the time you were using it, didn't want to actually type anything on it etc. They're great for that, I guess.
I for one will buy either a Tablet or a Netbook. Not an iPad though, a true Tablet, with LAN access to my files, Tethering, SD card, USB ports and video out. I'm holding out for all those Tablet pre-announcements, to see if one actually pans out.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I dropped 300 bucks for my netbook last year on a whim. I had a pretty burly laptop at the time...then the nVidia sli bug kicked in and fried my video cards. I had nothing else and I had another project come up, so I took my netbook in and used it for development (obviously hooked it up to a monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc.). Worked like a charm for me. And I do a lot of .NET development and SQL stuff, but that little Atom processor and the 2GB of RAM was plenty enough for my needs (and actually, I was able to catch a timing bug that I couldn't replicate on a higher end Win7 notebook, but I digress).
See, I can get actual WORK done on a netbook. I can do paperwork, make website edits, do a whole lot of other things without having to lug around (or pay for) a much more expensive high end laptop...and I don't see myself replacing that netbook with a bigger laptop anytime soon unless I'm stuck using higher end systems for a client. If I need to do something really high end, I use my desktop at home or whatever a client dumps on my desk for work purposes. Otherwise, the netbook is all I'd need...the only real reason I had my old laptop was for gaming, and I'm better off doing that on my desktop at home anyway.
The problem that a lot of folks have with understanding why tablets just aren't that much a threat to netbooks is that netbooks and tablets sate two different market segments. Tablets are fun, show-off things that you use to waste time (though just like netbooks, they really suck for gaming). But you can actually get work done on a netbook and a good one will cost you less, too. Sorry, tablet fans, but that's how it is. They may be super cool to you and you think that you paid 500 bucks for a great thing, but you know in your heart that you paid 500 bucks for a goof-off device.
Netbook sales were already leveling off. Looking at the sales figures, they have continued their downward growth trend that started months before the iPad was released. I have no idea how this is stretched into an iPad effect.
Worked like a charm for me. And I do a lot of .NET development and SQL stuff... ....
The problem that a lot of folks have with understanding why tablets just aren't that much a threat to netbooks is that netbooks and tablets sate two different market segments.
And the problem with people that think the iPad lives in a different space is that they do not realize how few people need to do things like .NET development that cannot be done on an iPad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wow! So I can have not-quite-the-same (since I can't for instance play my vast collection of xvid encoded TV shows) media experience on a $500 device as I could a $300 device if I buy some apps, adapters, and cables? And I can't do many of the other things a netbook can do?
Sign me up!
That's simply not true.
First, newer netbook chipsets built within the last year should handle 720p just fine. The only thing holding it back on the web is Flash being a bloated pig, and if you have to use Flash, those videos won't play on the iPad anyway, making this a moot point. With the new Flash 10 betas, even recent netbooks should be able to handle 720p Flash videos.
Second, most tasks (word processing, web browsing, sending/receiving email, etc.) don't require much CPU power at all. A netbook should be able to handle those tasks with ease. Thus, they do a lot of things reasonably well. They just don't happen to be the things you care about.
Stop right there. The iPad is a cool device, but as a long-time Apple zealot, even I can't argue that it can do everything a netbook can do. I currently use a real laptop, but if I did have a netbook, I could still run Finale or Sibelius (clumsily); I could still run Apache, PHP, and a web browser to prototype a web site; I could still compile and debug software; I could still run Photoshop (slowly); and so on.
Eventually, the iPad will have equivalents for many of these tools, but they don't exist yet. Thus, at least for now, the right tool depends on what you want to do with it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The problem is, most people pretty much think of the iPad as exactly what it *is*: a much bigger and bit more powerful iPhone.
My wife, who is unlike me straight right bang in the middle of the target group for the iPad, looks at an iPod Touch, and then she looks at an iPad, and she doesn't see the slightest similarity. To her, these are two completely unrelated devices. One is a music and video player that can also run games and show a web site on a useless tiny screen, the other is a web browsing and email computer that has lots of other applications, games on a big screen, video, and that also can play music. No similarity. None at all.
And you can argue with me all you like, if you tried to argue with her, she would just think you are being silly.
So....netbook sales are dropping?
Except that they aren't. What is dropping is the rate of growth in sales. Well what do you expect? Lots of people went out and bought one when they first came out. Now they have one. They don't need another one yet (netbooks have not been around for the standard life cycle of a computer).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
But of course, the original poster of the statistics was a dedicated Apple blog. There are vested interests everywhere but that doesn't justify bullshit statistics. Paul is right here, in this case. He calls out the bullshit statistics. And I assure you, the previous article that this one is referring to was because people are just too stupid to read graphs.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
75% of iPad Own Macs so you should change: "and hate the way their PCs work" to "and hate the way their Macs work", and since this is true, you should really replace "HP" with "MacBook*" since that's actually closer to the truth about the average iPad owner