One of the big questions hanging over Apple this quarter was whether or not iPad sales would continue its rapid growth. Last quarter Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire at $200 (well below the iPAd’s entry-level $500 price) and there was concern that even Apple diehard fans might delay their purchase of a tablet until the iPad 3 comes out—rumored for later this year. But iPad sales came in well above expectations at 15.4 million units. It is now a $9.1 billion business. There have been a total of 55 million iPads sold since launch in 2010.
iPad sales continue to surprise even CEO Tim Cook. During the conference call today, Cook predicted: “I think there will come a day that the tablet market is larger than the PC market.”
His repeated an earlier statement that the iPad is cannibalizing Mac sales, but it is cannibalizing Windows PC sales much more.
Cook also addressed the competition without mentioning the Kindle Fire’s name: “I think people really want to do multiple things with their tablets; as a result, we don’t really see these limited function tablets, these e-readers, as being in the same category. I don’t think people who want an iPad will settle for a limited function.”
The iPad’s strength, he argues, is that it is a general-purpose device, not a limited to just a few media-consuming functions. There are “over 170,000″ iPad apps, orders of magnitude more than another tablet. “It’s not just a product,”s ays Cook, “it is a strategy for the next decade.”
Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...
The iPad 2 launched in March 2011. It is one third thinner than the original ipad, has a front and rear camera and is 2 x faster than the original with its 1GHZ Dual Core A5 Chip.
Timothy D. Cook is Apple’s CEO, who took over from Steve Jobs on 25 August 2011. In his previous position as COO, Cook was responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an...
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