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Seems a bit like a Yankees fan complaining bitterly about the press covering the National League too. It's not like there is any shortage of coverage about who

by trotsky 15y ago

Seems a bit like a Yankees fan complaining bitterly about the press covering the National League too. It's not like there is any shortage of coverage about who is number one in tablets. There is obviously real competition for the #2-#5 slots (witness all the blood in the water) so why does it matter if an analyst report focuses on that?

danilocampos 15y ago
> ...why does it matter if an analyst report focuses on that? If you finish the piece, it matters because the resulting conclusions come from some sort of bizarro world. Right now the tablet game really comes down to Apple, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. (The Nook, which has sold literally orders of magnitude more units than the TouchPad, isn't even being counted.) But the report wants to reassure PC manufacturers that, somehow, that they are still in the hunt. From TFA: "Including the iPad makes statements like this, from NPD, seem absurd: PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space, as four of the top five tablet brands already have a strong U.S. consumer PC presence. Only two of the top five brands play in the smartphone market. NPD is trying to paint a picture that there’s a contest going on where there is none. I repeat the following from their report: 76 percent of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet didn’t even consider the iPad, an indication that a large group of consumers are looking for alternatives, and an opportunity for the rest of the market to grow their business. That’s one way to put it. Another way is that 92 percent of U.S. tablet buyers considered an iPad, and 89 percent bought an iPad, which means 97 percent of tablet buyers who merely considered an iPad bought an iPad, and if not for the 8 percent of tablet buyers who for whatever reason did not consider an iPad, none of these companies would have sold even 100,000 tablets over the first nine months of 2011."
- Kylekramer 15y ago
  OK? So? 8% of the market is "a large group of consumers". Most of top tablet makers are PC manufacturers. The original piece was entitled "U.S. Tablet Sales (excluding Apple) Exceed 1.2 Million Units in First 10 Months of 2011", and the article is about that. Gruber's piece is basically saying "I know this isn't about the iPad, but why aren't you talking about the iPad?" The original piece acknowledges the elephant in the room, says for the purposes of this article they will ignore the elephant in the room, and then analyzes the data as they say they would. What is wrong with that? If PC manufacturers take this report as an indication that they are safely in the hunt in the tablet space, then they would be complete and utter idiots. But there is still information to be gathered other than "Apple won, give up".
  - danilocampos 15y ago
    > But there is still information to be gathered other than "Apple won, give up". There most certainly is more information. Namely, how it was that Apple won and how it is that another company could maybe come close to trying. That would be a more useful analysis than "Hey, so, this guy has half a percent more of the market than this guy, but let's pretend that the iPad doesn't exist and say it's actually more like 6%." Pretending that fighting over the table scraps is a viable business is hardly impressive, here. And then you get little chunks of just straight bullshit, like this. "PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space." No, they aren't. They're selling handfuls of units. The dominant players in tablet land aren't commodity PC manufacturers. This is about as useful as saying I'm dominant in my run for the presidency when you only count polling from my friends, family and coworkers. NPD doesn't get off the hook for writing something absurd just because their title matches their thesis and they turned it to their homeroom teacher on time.
    - Kylekramer 15y ago
      Everyone is really misinterpreting that PC manufacturers are dominant line. They are saying that in the market besides the iPad, HP/Samsung/Acer/Asus are doing surprisingly well compared to HTC/Motorola/Nokia/Blackberry considering these devices usually run what were originally mobile phone OSs. But because everyone is up in arms about the fact the iPad wasn't considered, they miss that point and assume it is saying something (that PC makers are actually dominant) that it clearly isn't.

by trotsky 15y ago

danilocampos 15y ago

> ...why does it matter if an analyst report focuses on that? If you finish the piece, it matters because the resulting conclusions come from some sort of bizarro world. Right now the tablet game really comes down to Apple, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. (The Nook, which has sold literally orders of magnitude more units than the TouchPad, isn't even being counted.) But the report wants to reassure PC manufacturers that, somehow, that they are still in the hunt. From TFA: "Including the iPad makes statements like this, from NPD, seem absurd: PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space, as four of the top five tablet brands already have a strong U.S. consumer PC presence. Only two of the top five brands play in the smartphone market. NPD is trying to paint a picture that there’s a contest going on where there is none. I repeat the following from their report: 76 percent of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet didn’t even consider the iPad, an indication that a large group of consumers are looking for alternatives, and an opportunity for the rest of the market to grow their business. That’s one way to put it. Another way is that 92 percent of U.S. tablet buyers considered an iPad, and 89 percent bought an iPad, which means 97 percent of tablet buyers who merely considered an iPad bought an iPad, and if not for the 8 percent of tablet buyers who for whatever reason did not consider an iPad, none of these companies would have sold even 100,000 tablets over the first nine months of 2011."

Kylekramer 15y ago
OK? So? 8% of the market is "a large group of consumers". Most of top tablet makers are PC manufacturers. The original piece was entitled "U.S. Tablet Sales (excluding Apple) Exceed 1.2 Million Units in First 10 Months of 2011", and the article is about that. Gruber's piece is basically saying "I know this isn't about the iPad, but why aren't you talking about the iPad?" The original piece acknowledges the elephant in the room, says for the purposes of this article they will ignore the elephant in the room, and then analyzes the data as they say they would. What is wrong with that? If PC manufacturers take this report as an indication that they are safely in the hunt in the tablet space, then they would be complete and utter idiots. But there is still information to be gathered other than "Apple won, give up".
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > But there is still information to be gathered other than "Apple won, give up". There most certainly is more information. Namely, how it was that Apple won and how it is that another company could maybe come close to trying. That would be a more useful analysis than "Hey, so, this guy has half a percent more of the market than this guy, but let's pretend that the iPad doesn't exist and say it's actually more like 6%." Pretending that fighting over the table scraps is a viable business is hardly impressive, here. And then you get little chunks of just straight bullshit, like this. "PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space." No, they aren't. They're selling handfuls of units. The dominant players in tablet land aren't commodity PC manufacturers. This is about as useful as saying I'm dominant in my run for the presidency when you only count polling from my friends, family and coworkers. NPD doesn't get off the hook for writing something absurd just because their title matches their thesis and they turned it to their homeroom teacher on time.
  - Kylekramer 15y ago
    Everyone is really misinterpreting that PC manufacturers are dominant line. They are saying that in the market besides the iPad, HP/Samsung/Acer/Asus are doing surprisingly well compared to HTC/Motorola/Nokia/Blackberry considering these devices usually run what were originally mobile phone OSs. But because everyone is up in arms about the fact the iPad wasn't considered, they miss that point and assume it is saying something (that PC makers are actually dominant) that it clearly isn't.