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9.7-Inch iPad Pro Is Apple's Last Chance To Save the iPad Line (bgr.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the help-me-Obi-Wan-Kanobi-you're-my-only-hope dept.

An anonymous reader writes from an article written by Yoni Heisler on BGR: The iPad occupies a unique place in the annals of tech history. Upon its release in 2010, Apple's first stab at a tablet quickly set sales records. Not only did early iPad sales outpace early iPhone sales, but the iPad quickly became one of the fastest selling consumer electronics products of all time. The iPad's once-auspicious journey, however, would eventually take an unexpected detour. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, soaring sales began to taper off, even as Apple began to introduce newer and more advanced models. Today, iPad sales are still slumping. During Apple's most recent earnings report, the company revealed that year over year iPad sales fell by 25% while iPad related revenue dropped by 20%. Hardly an aberration, iPad sales have been dropping for well over two years at this point. And whereas Tim Cook once took to earnings conference calls to praise the iPad, he now finds himself forced to defend the iPad against a barrage of analyst questions. Yesterday, Apple released a new 9.7-inch iPad Pro and it stands to reason that this is Apple's last chance to truly inject a bit of life into a faltering product line.

10 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe increase the product longevity by Kazuma-san · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If your product does not offer any improvements over the one the consumers already have, and if it has to compete with an ever more crowded market space sales of course will dwindle. Apple might consider increasing the live cycles of their products. After all, there is no point in offering a product with better performance if hardly anybody wants it. I myself am an Android user. Changing from Motorola Droid to Galaxy S2 and than to HTC M9 were always great improvements. But now with the M10 on the horizon I cannot imagine why I should want one.

    1. Re:Maybe increase the product longevity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      iPad sales were huge in the beginning because . . . DUH . . . . the market for tablets was wide open. Now, nearly 6 years later, the market is saturated. Everyone who wants one, has one, and because the iPad is so over-priced, people are not going to rush out to buy a new one, they're more likely to stick with what they have.

      A "more powerful" iPad doesn't really get you much. It's still strictly for content consumption and niche functions. For the same price as the top of the line iPad I can buy a laptop that beats it in every meaningful category -- screen size, CPU power, RAM, storage space, etc. -- AND is actually powerful enough to run real software and do real work.

    2. Re:Maybe increase the product longevity by marklark · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're looking at it from the wrong end... I have an original iPad and it still works just fine for what we need. I may buy more of them. It may break but, in the meantime, I have no need to replace it.

    3. Re:Maybe increase the product longevity by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And that is the problem, they build them to last too damn long. the ipad 1 is a tank, and the batteries in all that I touch still are at 80% capacity. the 12" ipad pro is the first ipad that entices me to replace my air version 1. and I only got that because the wife took my older ipad and wont give it back.

      Yet I have been through 30 android tablets.... most have screens made from potatochips that break easily (I have 3 nexus 7's with broken screens in my hardware hacking bin) or the micro USB plug get's buggered up. We really need an open source lightning connector replacement as that part is pretty cool.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Maybe increase the product longevity by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think they have the opposite problem. People typically upgrade phones every few years, especially in the US where most people buy them on contract. However, with tablets, there's no contract so people tend to hold on to them longer. I've still got an iPad 3 from 4 years ago that still works perfectly fine for what I use it for so there's no compelling reason for me to get a newer model outside of general tech lust and if it does get replaced, it can get handed down to someone else who'll be able to make use of it. It's still getting software updates as well so it's not like it's missing some seriously important security patch. The only real downside is that the RAM is rather limited and the amount of web page bloat means that it can't have more a than a few open tabs before reloading pages constantly, but I expect installing ad-blocking software would go a long way towards improving the browsing performance.

      There really isn't more that a newer, more powerful tablet can do to improve on what I use a tablet for. Sure you can throw more CPU or RAM in it to speed up what I'm already doing, but watching streaming video, reading books, or some light web-browsing isn't going to be vastly improved no matter what they do and I'm not interested in doing the kinds of tasks that a newer model of tablet might enable.

      Tablets are a lot more like PCs than they are phones in that consumers can hold onto them a lot longer. Also with the trend towards larger and larger phones, some people are going to skip out on getting a tablet completely.

    5. Re:Maybe increase the product longevity by bangular · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There was a time in this country that building a quality product that lasted a long time was seen POSITIVELY by your investors.

  2. It's simple. by kuzb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ipad doesn't offer a superior experience anymore. it offers a much higher price that people are now unwilling to pay for a device that will likely only be relevant for a year. If they want to stay in the market, they need to cut the price significantly and actually start competing.

    --
    BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
  3. We've already got one by imidan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Naturally, sales have declined. Those of us who really wanted one already bought one. I don't need another one. I especially don't care that the newer ones have faster processors and higher resolution because mostly I use it to read email and surf the web. So I plan on using the one I have until it fails. Oh, and I'm planning on replacing the batteries soon, despite Apple's efforts to make that difficult. Maybe that's what they should have planned on: selling us all iPads with replaceable batteries, and then selling us all new batteries in a few years.

    I'm sure I'll be in the market for a new tablet one day, but I think Tim Cook and I have very different ideas about the practical lifespan of these devices.

  4. The iPad is doing just fine... by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem is expectations, not the product.

    Almost everyone who wants an iPad now has now, the product has moved into a longer term replacement cycle, rather than a first purchase cycle.

    I purchased the iPad in 2010, then the iPad 2 next year, then the 3 the year after that. After that, I did buy a 4, and passed the 3 down to my kids.

    We kept the combination of the 3 and 4 for awhile, only replacing them last year with a pair of iPad Air 2 units with 128GB each. Expensive, but they'll be good for a LONG time now... My hope is to get 4 years out of them before they need replacing, time will tell how that works out.

    ---

    Keep in mind the iPhone is next in line for this. The iPhone 6/6s and 6 Plus/ 6s Plus are both "fine". We have a pair of 6 Plus models that we have no intention of replacing with a 6s, or even a 7 for that matter. Probably will wait past the 7s as well and see what the 8 offers.

    These devices have been going through massive improvements year over year, but at some point they get "good enough" for everything you want to do with a phone.

    They can't make them bigger while keeping them phones, so the size limit has been reached. The CPU is plenty fast for anything we do on them.

    Watch the next 2 years, the iPhone will see the same slowdown in sales.

    ---

    It has been a huge mistake on Apple's part to so completely depend on these two products for sales. They have (or had) a window to move the Mac line along and provide another option besides Windows, but they will never be anything but a small corner of the market with their current Mac product line. Shame, because I've love some competition there.

  5. Why do these articles keep coming?? by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These "death of the ipad" articles are bloody loopy.
    Sales are dropping, but that CERTAINLY doesn't mean it's not an incredibly popular device.

    Here's some hypothetical reasons I think sales could be dropping.
    Android tablets starting to genuinely compete.
    Some business sales going to the Surface, since it transcends that whole, Windows laptop / tablet world
    but the number 1 reason I suspect sales are dropping,... so many god damned people own an ipad now and anything above an ipad3 is a perfectly suitable little device for checking mail, facebook, netflix, photo viewing. People are not feeling the bug to upgrade.

    Will they still upgrade? Damn straight. Will it be as often? No.
    Personally, considering how many god damn ipads are out there, I think a 25% drop in sales is not the end of the world. The ipad has replaced many a desktop, now it too has reached a 'good enough' level of performance (like the desktop) so sales will taper to a more natural replacement and upgrade cycle.

    It's a non story.