From Horace Dediu’s Asymco post on the second Year of the iPad in a row.
The iPad has out-sold the Mac since inception and is now about three times the volume. However, the growth rate in the Mac has not changed much.
The new data shows that the iPad alone would be the largest PC vendor and Apple with iPad and Mac combined is selling 5 million more units (or 30%) than the top PC vendor.
Selling three times as many iPads as Macs at a time when Mac sales continue on a nice upward trend is impressive – but that last bit that I’ve bolded above is the truly amazing part. The new data (latest quarterly results) shows that iPad alone would be the biggest PC vendor if it was considered a computer.
Maybe the Post-PC era that Steve Jobs talked about is not so far off.
The iPad is an amazing and versatile device, and this week is providing plenty of evidence of the amazing numbers that back that up. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has also offered up some thoughts on why the iPad is such a huge success and how huge its potential is.
Here are a few of those amazing numbers that have caught my eye, along with some of those thoughts from Tim Cook, and a few of my own thoughts:
– As Alicia noted the other day, Apple sold over 40 million iPads in 2011, and over 15 million in the last quarter of the year. Both numbers are well ahead of all other tablets sold combined. The 15 million sold is also triple the number of Macs sold in that quarter – and it was a record quarter for Mac sales. Tim Cook said in Apple’s earnings call earlier this week that he believes there will come a day when the tablet market is bigger than the PC market.
That day may not be that far off, as highlighted by this comment noted by TechCrunch:
Towards the end of the earnings call, Tim Cook dropped a huge nugget of information: led by 15 million iPads sold last quarter, the tablet market is now larger than the entire desktop PC market.
– More than 55 million iPads have been sold in less than two years on the market. Among the dozens of supposed rival Android, Windows, Blackberry and other tablets it doesn’t look likely that any of them have even sold 10 million thus far.
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During the question and answer segment of today’s Earnings Conference call, Apple CEO Tim Cook made some interesting comments in response to a question of what the company thinks of their competition on tablet market. What follows is a paraphrasing of his direct remarks.
He began by stressing that Apple was happy with the 15.43 million iPad units sold in the final calendar quarter of 2011, explaining that it was consistent with their long-term belief that the tablet segment is a huge opportunity for Apple over time. Indeed, he explained that they believe that the tablet market will be larger than the PC market; tablet sales are already seeming to exceed desktop sales in US.
With regards to the competitiveness of the iPad, he feels that the iPad is in a class by itself. Their focus is on optimization of apps that take advantage of larger canvas. The iPad has a wealth of quality apps available, compared to only a few hundred on competitors’ offerings.
He closed by saying that they don’t see limited function tablets such as e-readers being in the same category as iPad. These limited-function tablets will have customers and they will sell a fair number of units. However, he opined that people who want an iPad will not settle for a device with less functionality.
He delivered a smile-inducing full stop to his remarks, saying that last year was supposed to be year of the tablet. Rather it was Year of the iPad.
Well said.
Apple’s education announcement event this morning focused on their efforts to reinvent textbooks on the iPad. As part of the launch of these efforts, today has seen the release of the new iBooks Author, a free Mac app to be used as an authoring / publishing tool for textbooks and books of all types, and of iBooks 2.
iBooks 2 is really the 2.0 version of iBooks – and it already features some of the shiny new textbooks for the iPad, 8 of them right now. These include Algebra 1, Geometry, Environmental Science, Biology, and more. One of the most impressive looking of these is ‘Life on Earth’, a new digital biology textbook for high school students. This one is by E.O. Wilson, a professor emeritus at Harvard, distinguished biologist, and two-time Pulitzer winner. Right now it has a preview of the book and a sample chapter available for free, with future chapters to be released this spring.
One of the best things about this morning’s news on iPad textbooks is the pricing levels. iBooks textbooks will be priced at $14.99 and below – significantly lower than current prices for printed textbooks.
If you already have iBooks installed, there’s an update for it available today, that updates it to the 2.0 version that’s needed to download these new textbooks.
