6 ms·

Is Apple losing the tablet wars?

23 points by DenODonnell 13y ago

Geee 13y ago
There was an interesting pie chart shown at the Apple special event, which said that 75-80% of tablet usage is on iPad. I.e. iPads are actually used a lot more, even if they're losing in numbers. I'm wondering if there's a source for that graph somewhere.
- thrillgore 13y ago
  I take any "official" numbers from Apple with a gra...no, the entire shaker of salt. There's probably enough external data to confirm that the iPad owns the real lion's share though.
  - Steko 13y ago
    Apple is likely just quoting third party numbers which have been widely circulated and it's likely they're showing the more favorable NA numbers. E.g. http://gigaom.com/2013/07/23/the-ipad-accounted-for-84-3-percent-of-web-traffic-from-tablets-in-june/ http://gigaom.com/2013/07/23/the-ipad-accounted-for-84-3-per...
- ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
  That's similar to the stat that showed people with iPhones used their browsers more than people with Android phones. Apple may be pulling it out of their ass, but its not like there's not a precedent for it.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  I don't know what source they used for that or if the number is realistic, but even as an anti-Apple Android fanboy I find it pretty easy to believe there is a general truth to the idea that the sold to still-used ratio on Androids is likely much more divergent than it is on iOS. Historically Android tablets have had support dropped much more quickly than iPads. I'm sure there are lots more Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich based tablets just sitting in a drawer somewhere replaced by shinier newer tablets running Jelly Bean than there are iPads which have a much higher "hand-me-down" or resell value even if the original owners move on to something newer. Anecdotal: I know a few people just now considering upgrading from their iPad gen 1, and not a single person who is still using a first gen Android tablet.
  - jfb 13y ago
    I think it's possible that the low-end Android tablets (e.g., the $99 generic ones, not the Nexus or high-end Samsungs) a) make up a huge majority of the number of units sold and b) are used in a very different way than the iPad is. For instance, I have plenty of friends who are Apple all the way except for cheap Android tablets that their kids use for Angry Birds or watching video -- and nothing else. FULL DISCLOSURE: I work for Apple.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Interesting point about resale value. iPads resell for insane prices on eBay. A lot of what might get chalked up as unit sales of cheap tablets in the Apple ecosystem involve second-hand sales of older models.
- janesvilleseo 13y ago
  Doing a quick look at Google Analytics for a few sites I manage and segmenting the traffic with Google's built in segment for Tablet traffic, I show that about 79% of the tablet traffic comes from iPads.
  - nikatwork 13y ago
    I was looking at mobile traffic patterns a few years ago for Oceania, and over 90% of the traffic was ios. The other important factor for HNers is rate and volume of app purchases, the last figures I saw there were also completely dominated by ios - that is to say, Apple users buy tons of apps compared to Android. Would be interesting to see the current stats.
- DenODonnell 13y ago
  I found that to be one of the more interesting metrics shown - but have to agree with everyone else as to how that is calculated. That said, anecdotally, it seems to jive up with experience, but who knows.
- gdilla 13y ago
  Didn't the gap also come out of the fact Apple sells direct, and when they say they sold an ipad, they sold an ipad, and when Google, maybe even Samsung, say they sold a device, it is to the end retailer (carriers, bestbuy, and the like)? So they may be moving tons of devices, some significant(?) portion of which are sitting on shelves.
- simonebrunozzi 13y ago
  It was 81% on iPad, 19% on everything else. Not sure which metrics they're considering, though. I assume it is "time spent on devices", but that metric is not very objective, nor easy to measure.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  I think usage numbers for one single device need to be paired with ownership/usage of other devices by the same people in order to be more meaningful. A lot of people keep talking about how the PC is dead. But I spend roughly 10hrs a day in front of a laptop (which is still considered a PC, AFAIK). So if I am doing anything online, it is more often than not from my laptop rather than my phone or tablet. There are still many things that I'd prefer to do from my laptop so I am also just as likely to get up and go to the laptop than pull out my phone or reach for the tablet. When the laptop is not available, the tablet will do. It would be interesting to see how many iPad (and other tablet) users don't even have another system to use, thus do everything on it. If I didn't have another system, I would use my tablet more. But I don't need to.
joezydeco 13y ago
Sigh. Why does someone have to "win" any of this nonsense? Cook just said they've sold 170,000,000 iPads to date. Does it really matter anymore what Apple does here unless you're a shareholder?
- roc 13y ago
  Because some people have eyeballs to attract. Just treat such discussion as a "tell" that someone is much more interested in having people listen to them than in having anything worth saying.
- cmsj 13y ago
  People love things to be a war, even if the "opposing sides" are playing a different game (quality & profit for Apple, market share for Google).
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    I think it's more about people wanting to know they're on the winning side. They purchase an Xbox and then spend the rest of their time convincing PS3 users they made a mistake. Android vs iPhone. Coke vs Pepsi. Mercedes vs BMW. etc etc etc etc.
- bsaul 13y ago
  well, it does matter a lot if like some people here, you're a software developper planning on developping on ios or android. if ios is 10% "market share", it means android is 90%, so you better be learning the subtilities of android sdk and forget about improving your objective c skills. if it's 90% share, it means you can safely tell your customers to start building an ios version of their app first, then maybe later see if they want to invest on an android version. and finally if it's 50/50, and stays like that for a couple of years, then you should probably invest in some cross-platform development environments. it's not just marketing, believe me.
  - widdershins 13y ago
    And if iOS users are 5x more likely to spend money on apps, that matters too.
WizzleKake 13y ago
No.
- BaconJuice 13y ago
  ha.
KJBweb 13y ago
Like mobile operating system usage stats, whilst Apple with their iOS don't hold the largest market share, what they do hold is far, far more profitable to them.
millerm 13y ago
I am not sure why there has to be a "war". McDonalds may be the largest burger 'restaurant' but that doesn't mean they are the best. I have a feeling anyone can make a better burger (or tofu burger) than McDonalds. Sure, the "war" helps drive innovation. But, sometimes it's just innovation for innovation sake and not really providing value. Such as HDMI output on smartphones. I'm guessing less than 0.01% of people care about that one. Anyway, I like my iPad/iPhone/OS X experience. I'm happy and that is all that matters to me in the end when I buy something. I had played with some Samsung products using Android (since I was going to port some of my iOS applications over) and I was completely disappointed. I passed that development onto someone else. :-) Anyway, to each his/her own! I'm pretty sure more people buy Honda cars than BMW or Tesla and that doesn't mean BMW or Tesla are losing the car wars.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  HDMI is a great feature, to bad there are many anti-features that are required to be there by regulation as a dependency. It would be a real shame if the telecom players lost any power over their customers, if cell phones became a useful replacement for a desktop. Maybe we can find a way to retain power over users and let them be productive, while capturing their value. it will be a win-win (we win, and win again).
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  I've never used the HDMI on my phone but I have on my tablet. I love being able to load an SD card with movies via my computer, insert the SD card into my tablet and go. Works great on planes and anywhere else that streaming is not possible. And if I am in a location where I can watch something on a larger screen, I can use the HDMI output instead. IMO, it is unfortunate that Apple never embraced the idea of alternative I/O. But I agree that this doesn't have to be a war with only one winner. In my house, we've both Android and iOS devices. And everybody sees pros/cons of their devices of choice.
- Spittie 13y ago
  I own a Nexus 7 (2012), which sadly doesn't have HDMI output, otherwise I would happily use it. I could use it to easily watch movies/shows on my TV, without having to resort to a computer (not everyone has an HTPC behind their TV, and a tablet is way easier to move than a laptop/desktop). I could just fire up an emulator (emulations on mobile devices is great those days, you can emulate pretty much every console older than the psx), connect a wireless/Bluetooth controller to it, and use it as a nice, portable "retro"-console. Returning on your article, I totally agree with your last point. Because chocolate ice cream sell better, it doesn't mean that vanilla ice cream is losing the "ice cream war".
tixocloud 13y ago
There's a lot of focus on market share. Apple will never have the highest market share so it will never "win the tablet war" simply because of it's premium pricing. All the other competitors are essentially based on high-volume, low-margin strategies. Apple's strategy is based on low-volume, high-margin.
- innino 13y ago
  I wouldn't describe Microsoft or Nokia's tablets as high-volume, low-margin...
dingaling 13y ago
I don't think they're losing whilst iOS remains the 'write here first' target for apps. I'm not a tablet user, but from observation that seems to remain true.
error54 13y ago
Let's not forget that Google doesn't release sales numbers for it's Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets. While I'm sure they are nowhere near the Apple's numbers, I don't think they're trivial and almost certainly rival Samsung's numbers.
IBM 13y ago
If you look at market share you would think they are, but the market is expanding greatly and will continue to do so. If you look at the number of units sold, they still go up year over year. The same is true for iPhones.
ScottWhigham 13y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
- sjtgraham 13y ago
  Betteridge's law of headlinesʹ: "Everytime Betteridge's law can be invoked on HN, someone will"
nerfhammer 13y ago
Does the definition of tablet include the (non-Fire) Kindle? That could explain the discrepancy between Apple's apparent tablet market share and that I've almost never seen a non-iPad tablet in public other than kindles. The kindle reader is sort of in a different market than the iPad though.
al2o3cr 13y ago
Better question: is BMW losing the car wars? ;)
- millerm 13y ago
  Did you read my earlier reply? Are you poking fun? ;-)
danmaz74 13y ago
Wow, this article is really a piece of junk. You can't say "Apple sells more iPads in 3 days than...", in the present tense, and then use data for an exceptional launch event. At the end of October 2013, you can't base a trend on data that compares 2012 with 2011. And so on.
petervandijck 13y ago
At this point in time that's a ridiculous proposition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

23 points by DenODonnell 13y ago

Geee 13y ago

There was an interesting pie chart shown at the Apple special event, which said that 75-80% of tablet usage is on iPad. I.e. iPads are actually used a lot more, even if they're losing in numbers. I'm wondering if there's a source for that graph somewhere.

thrillgore 13y ago
I take any "official" numbers from Apple with a gra...no, the entire shaker of salt. There's probably enough external data to confirm that the iPad owns the real lion's share though.
- Steko 13y ago
  Apple is likely just quoting third party numbers which have been widely circulated and it's likely they're showing the more favorable NA numbers. E.g. http://gigaom.com/2013/07/23/the-ipad-accounted-for-84-3-percent-of-web-traffic-from-tablets-in-june/ http://gigaom.com/2013/07/23/the-ipad-accounted-for-84-3-per...
ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
That's similar to the stat that showed people with iPhones used their browsers more than people with Android phones. Apple may be pulling it out of their ass, but its not like there's not a precedent for it.
georgemcbay 13y ago
I don't know what source they used for that or if the number is realistic, but even as an anti-Apple Android fanboy I find it pretty easy to believe there is a general truth to the idea that the sold to still-used ratio on Androids is likely much more divergent than it is on iOS. Historically Android tablets have had support dropped much more quickly than iPads. I'm sure there are lots more Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich based tablets just sitting in a drawer somewhere replaced by shinier newer tablets running Jelly Bean than there are iPads which have a much higher "hand-me-down" or resell value even if the original owners move on to something newer. Anecdotal: I know a few people just now considering upgrading from their iPad gen 1, and not a single person who is still using a first gen Android tablet.
- jfb 13y ago
  I think it's possible that the low-end Android tablets (e.g., the $99 generic ones, not the Nexus or high-end Samsungs) a) make up a huge majority of the number of units sold and b) are used in a very different way than the iPad is. For instance, I have plenty of friends who are Apple all the way except for cheap Android tablets that their kids use for Angry Birds or watching video -- and nothing else. FULL DISCLOSURE: I work for Apple.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Interesting point about resale value. iPads resell for insane prices on eBay. A lot of what might get chalked up as unit sales of cheap tablets in the Apple ecosystem involve second-hand sales of older models.
janesvilleseo 13y ago
Doing a quick look at Google Analytics for a few sites I manage and segmenting the traffic with Google's built in segment for Tablet traffic, I show that about 79% of the tablet traffic comes from iPads.
- nikatwork 13y ago
  I was looking at mobile traffic patterns a few years ago for Oceania, and over 90% of the traffic was ios. The other important factor for HNers is rate and volume of app purchases, the last figures I saw there were also completely dominated by ios - that is to say, Apple users buy tons of apps compared to Android. Would be interesting to see the current stats.
DenODonnell 13y ago
I found that to be one of the more interesting metrics shown - but have to agree with everyone else as to how that is calculated. That said, anecdotally, it seems to jive up with experience, but who knows.
gdilla 13y ago
Didn't the gap also come out of the fact Apple sells direct, and when they say they sold an ipad, they sold an ipad, and when Google, maybe even Samsung, say they sold a device, it is to the end retailer (carriers, bestbuy, and the like)? So they may be moving tons of devices, some significant(?) portion of which are sitting on shelves.
simonebrunozzi 13y ago
It was 81% on iPad, 19% on everything else. Not sure which metrics they're considering, though. I assume it is "time spent on devices", but that metric is not very objective, nor easy to measure.
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
I think usage numbers for one single device need to be paired with ownership/usage of other devices by the same people in order to be more meaningful. A lot of people keep talking about how the PC is dead. But I spend roughly 10hrs a day in front of a laptop (which is still considered a PC, AFAIK). So if I am doing anything online, it is more often than not from my laptop rather than my phone or tablet. There are still many things that I'd prefer to do from my laptop so I am also just as likely to get up and go to the laptop than pull out my phone or reach for the tablet. When the laptop is not available, the tablet will do. It would be interesting to see how many iPad (and other tablet) users don't even have another system to use, thus do everything on it. If I didn't have another system, I would use my tablet more. But I don't need to.

joezydeco 13y ago

Sigh. Why does someone have to "win" any of this nonsense? Cook just said they've sold 170,000,000 iPads to date. Does it really matter anymore what Apple does here unless you're a shareholder?

roc 13y ago
Because some people have eyeballs to attract. Just treat such discussion as a "tell" that someone is much more interested in having people listen to them than in having anything worth saying.
cmsj 13y ago
People love things to be a war, even if the "opposing sides" are playing a different game (quality & profit for Apple, market share for Google).
- joezydeco 13y ago
  I think it's more about people wanting to know they're on the winning side. They purchase an Xbox and then spend the rest of their time convincing PS3 users they made a mistake. Android vs iPhone. Coke vs Pepsi. Mercedes vs BMW. etc etc etc etc.
bsaul 13y ago
well, it does matter a lot if like some people here, you're a software developper planning on developping on ios or android. if ios is 10% "market share", it means android is 90%, so you better be learning the subtilities of android sdk and forget about improving your objective c skills. if it's 90% share, it means you can safely tell your customers to start building an ios version of their app first, then maybe later see if they want to invest on an android version. and finally if it's 50/50, and stays like that for a couple of years, then you should probably invest in some cross-platform development environments. it's not just marketing, believe me.
- widdershins 13y ago
  And if iOS users are 5x more likely to spend money on apps, that matters too.

WizzleKake 13y ago

No.

BaconJuice 13y ago
ha.

KJBweb 13y ago

Like mobile operating system usage stats, whilst Apple with their iOS don't hold the largest market share, what they do hold is far, far more profitable to them.

millerm 13y ago

I am not sure why there has to be a "war". McDonalds may be the largest burger 'restaurant' but that doesn't mean they are the best. I have a feeling anyone can make a better burger (or tofu burger) than McDonalds. Sure, the "war" helps drive innovation. But, sometimes it's just innovation for innovation sake and not really providing value. Such as HDMI output on smartphones. I'm guessing less than 0.01% of people care about that one. Anyway, I like my iPad/iPhone/OS X experience. I'm happy and that is all that matters to me in the end when I buy something. I had played with some Samsung products using Android (since I was going to port some of my iOS applications over) and I was completely disappointed. I passed that development onto someone else. :-) Anyway, to each his/her own! I'm pretty sure more people buy Honda cars than BMW or Tesla and that doesn't mean BMW or Tesla are losing the car wars.

AsymetricCom 13y ago
HDMI is a great feature, to bad there are many anti-features that are required to be there by regulation as a dependency. It would be a real shame if the telecom players lost any power over their customers, if cell phones became a useful replacement for a desktop. Maybe we can find a way to retain power over users and let them be productive, while capturing their value. it will be a win-win (we win, and win again).
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
I've never used the HDMI on my phone but I have on my tablet. I love being able to load an SD card with movies via my computer, insert the SD card into my tablet and go. Works great on planes and anywhere else that streaming is not possible. And if I am in a location where I can watch something on a larger screen, I can use the HDMI output instead. IMO, it is unfortunate that Apple never embraced the idea of alternative I/O. But I agree that this doesn't have to be a war with only one winner. In my house, we've both Android and iOS devices. And everybody sees pros/cons of their devices of choice.
Spittie 13y ago
I own a Nexus 7 (2012), which sadly doesn't have HDMI output, otherwise I would happily use it. I could use it to easily watch movies/shows on my TV, without having to resort to a computer (not everyone has an HTPC behind their TV, and a tablet is way easier to move than a laptop/desktop). I could just fire up an emulator (emulations on mobile devices is great those days, you can emulate pretty much every console older than the psx), connect a wireless/Bluetooth controller to it, and use it as a nice, portable "retro"-console. Returning on your article, I totally agree with your last point. Because chocolate ice cream sell better, it doesn't mean that vanilla ice cream is losing the "ice cream war".

tixocloud 13y ago

There's a lot of focus on market share. Apple will never have the highest market share so it will never "win the tablet war" simply because of it's premium pricing. All the other competitors are essentially based on high-volume, low-margin strategies. Apple's strategy is based on low-volume, high-margin.

innino 13y ago
I wouldn't describe Microsoft or Nokia's tablets as high-volume, low-margin...

dingaling 13y ago

I don't think they're losing whilst iOS remains the 'write here first' target for apps. I'm not a tablet user, but from observation that seems to remain true.

error54 13y ago

Let's not forget that Google doesn't release sales numbers for it's Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets. While I'm sure they are nowhere near the Apple's numbers, I don't think they're trivial and almost certainly rival Samsung's numbers.

IBM 13y ago

If you look at market share you would think they are, but the market is expanding greatly and will continue to do so. If you look at the number of units sold, they still go up year over year. The same is true for iPhones.

ScottWhigham 13y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

sjtgraham 13y ago
Betteridge's law of headlinesʹ: "Everytime Betteridge's law can be invoked on HN, someone will"

nerfhammer 13y ago

Does the definition of tablet include the (non-Fire) Kindle? That could explain the discrepancy between Apple's apparent tablet market share and that I've almost never seen a non-iPad tablet in public other than kindles. The kindle reader is sort of in a different market than the iPad though.

al2o3cr 13y ago

Better question: is BMW losing the car wars? ;)

millerm 13y ago
Did you read my earlier reply? Are you poking fun? ;-)

danmaz74 13y ago

Wow, this article is really a piece of junk. You can't say "Apple sells more iPads in 3 days than...", in the present tense, and then use data for an exceptional launch event. At the end of October 2013, you can't base a trend on data that compares 2012 with 2011. And so on.

petervandijck 13y ago

At this point in time that's a ridiculous proposition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines