iPad Fever Is Officially Cooling

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Christina Bonnington reports that the public is not gobbling up iPads like they used to. Analysts had projected iPad sales would reach 19.7 million but Apple sold 16.35 million iPads, a drop of roughly 16.4 percent since last year. 'For many, the iPad they have is good enough–unlike a phone, with significant new features like Touch ID, or a better camera, the iPad's improvements over the past few years have been more subtle,' writes Bonnington. 'The latest iterations feature a better Retina display, a slimmer design, and faster processing. Improvements, yes, but enough to justify a near thousand dollar purchase? Others seem to be finding that their smartphone can do the job that their tablet used to do just as well, especially on those larger screened phablets.'

While the continued success of the iPad may be up in the air, another formerly popular member of Apple's product line is definitely on its way to the grave. The iPod, once Apple's crown jewel, posted a sales drop of 51 percent since last year. Only 2.76 million units were sold, a far cry from its heyday of almost 23 million back in 2008. 'Apple's past growth has been driven mostly by entering entirely new product categories, like it did when it introduced the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010,' says Andrew Cunningham. 'The most persistent rumors involve TV (whether a new Apple TV set-top box or an entire television set) and wearable computing devices (the perennially imminent "iWatch"), but calls for larger and cheaper iPhones also continue.'"

Comments

We've kept our iPad 3 on iOS 5

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

My iPad 1 got slower and slower with each update, until IOS 5, when the updates cease.

We've deliberately kept our gen 3 iPad on its original iOS 5, despite all Apple's attempts to trick us into upgrading. As far as I can see from on-line feedback, iOS 6 was basically a Vista-scale train wreck with poor performance to match, while iOS 7 turns the device into looking like a kindergarten toy. Apple just seem very proud that the performance on "old" devices -- you know, the ones we were buying a whole two years ago -- doesn't suck quite as much in iOS 7 as it does with iOS 6.

For us, Apple have blown it at this point. Their entire iDevice set-up is consumer-hostile: create a walled garden app ecosystem, then try to use app developers to force device owners to upgrade their OS just so artificially nerfed updates of apps will work again, resulting in a device that doesn't perform as well as it did when purchased but can't be "downgraded" back to its original OS, and so causing completely unnecessary obsolescence in a very expensive device that would otherwise have lasted several more years. We quite like our iPad, but we have no interest in buying anything similar from Apple again in the current environment.