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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.'"
We should note that Paul here has both a vested interest in dogging on the ipad and a long history of making hyperbolic statements about how the iPad can't or won't succeed. Also, the original graph clearly showed the growth rate changing, a flow variable, not the number of units, the stock. If the growth rate drops off and is replaced by growth in iPads, how in the world is that not a takeover? What manufacturer will net into a market where the rate of growth is much less than it was even 6 months ago.
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.
I think if the iPad had a competitive price point it might be an interesting battle, one in which the iPad might win... But right now the iPad is priced like a laptop. If you look at the typical Netbook price and the cheapest iPad then we are talking above 100% price increase.
ePC - £199
iPad - £429
"Full" Laptop - £400
However what you might see happen is the iPad gets bundled with 3G mobile services and winds up costing a fair bit less in relative terms... Netbooks have tried to bundle with 3G but I think it is safe to say it has been fairly unsuccessful.
So let me get this straight, the argument here is that the iPad isnt effecting netbook sales because the projected number of netbooks to be sold in 2011 hasn't been changed in the last month ...
Seriously, someone fucking fire timothy, he hasn't posted anything that wasn't a blatent slashvertisment or flat out obviously wrong in at least 2 years.
Why don't we wait until someone gets some real sales numbers and there has been more than a month before we start talking about how its effecting the market.
I don't think the iPad is going to effect much either, but I don't try to back that up using sales PROJECTIONS made by people who aren't actually doing the selling. The WSJ must be pretty damn smart to predict the future with 0 input to base it on.
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As a content creator, for me, the Ipad just doesn't cut it.
As a plumber, I can tell you that the iPad's not very useful for that, either.
Did you have a point?
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
and you're likely going to see $200-$300 tablets with better specs
Why then is the Crunchpad (sorry, JooJoo) $500?
Before it was released, it was supposed to be $200 too... I'll believe that price point when I see it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
None of the linked products are competitors to the iPad or a typical netbook. With a 800x480 screen and puny single-core ARM they have specs equivalent to a high end phone - except that a phone can fit in a standard trouser pocket and make voice calls.
I find it funny that people get so emotional over someone else's choice in computers.
I also find it funny that only on Slashdot you can find people comparing computing devices that were engineer well enough to actually revive a basically dead touch tablet market, to pieces of crap thrown together at a Chinese assembly plant.
Let's use Slashdot's mandatory car metaphor as an example:
Sure we can all drive to work on a Vespa scooter, but I prefer to drive my Honda automobile. There is a tangible difference between having the capability to drive to work, and actually wanting to use the vehicle to drive to work. The same applies to computers.
Sure I can spend a lot of time figuring out how to get that $80-$190 off brand device to do what I want, or I can spend a little more money and get something useful like a $300-$400 Asus netbook or $400 - $800 Apple iPad.
That's not even taking reliability into consideration, I have yet found anything that is both really cheap and reliable. Face it the only thing those cheap pieces of crap found only on ebay are good at is to provide some flimsy evidence to a Slashdot poster so that they can say "See I can find something cheaper that technically could do something similar to that expensive computer you like so much!!"
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Okay, the "correlation is not causation" loons have reached a new plateau of insanity. As far as i can tell there is neither correlation nor causation in the statistical sense involved here. There is an easily verified claim that the netbook market is currently larger than the iPad market, and there is an impossible to prove (except with the passage of time of course) but entirely reasonable belief that that will continue to be the case in the future. So where is the supposed correlation that is being incorrectly claimed to indicate a causation?
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The numbers look pretty grim for netbooks since the pre-iPad hype that dominated CES, and they get worse after the iPad introduction and worse again after the iPad shipped. But even so, I wasn't really sure that iPad was killing the netbook until Thurrott said it's not.
Thurrott was pro-tablet right up until Apple reinvented the tablet. Now he will be anti-tablet right up until Microsoft has an iPad copy for him to promote.
The guy is paid by Microsoft and Dell and has no credibility.
He whined and whined and whined about iPhone v1 and v2 not having "such a basic feature" as Copy/Paste and multitasking of 3rd party applications. Then when Microsoft announced they were killing Windows Mobile in 2009 and would be back in 2011 with "Windows Phone 7" which would lack both Copy/Paste and multitasking of 3rd party applications, Thurrott cheered them. So, keeping score: not having Copy/Paste in 2007-2008 during your first 2 years in the phone market is just totally inexcusable, while removing Copy/Paste in 2011 in your 10th year in the phone market is just fine, no biggie.
He also said of Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" that "he can't disagree more" with it. That shows Thurrott knows nothing about mobiles, where there is no FlashPlayer at all, and nothing about the consumer market, where vendor neutral standardized audio video is not just the norm, it's a religion.
To the actual issue of tablet versus netbook: it's clear that perceptions of the tablet and netbook have been changed, same as iPhone versus the smartphones of 2007. A month ago, HP released an HP Slate teaser video, then just recently they bought Palm and we hear the Slate has been canceled because Windows 7 is apparently not a mobile OS. (You don't say!?) Compared to a netbook, iPad is half the size, half the weight, double the battery life, and 1000 times sexier. It makes a netbook look like a pocket protector. Half the size and weight and double the battery life ... that just can't be argued with. Even with a small Bluetooth keyboard added, iPad is still much more mobile than a netbook. And you can use a 100% scale Bluetooth keyboard and get real typing done.
The netbook had fatal flaws anyway. If you're going to have a keyboard, make it 100% scale. Every PC maker CEO spoke out against netbooks, even when they were most popular. So it would actually be surprising if we could have this Year Of The Tablet in 2010 and not see the netbook be very much affected. Walt Mossberg said iPad replaced 80% of his notebook use in the first week, so where does that leave a netbook? He's a techie. For consumers it is even worse, they are finding iPad replaces 95% of their Mac/PC use.