The Fascinating iPad

Yesterday Apple held their annual keynote to announce the new iPhone. During that keynote as Apple always does they throw out their very impressive numbers for their other products. Tim Cook did a terrific job of presenting the facts yesterday and as always I am blown away by what I heard.

17 Million

Since the launch of the 3rd generation iPad, Apple has sold 17 million iPad’s. Wow, just wow. No doubt the iPad is successful and Apple presented the numbers to back it up. Apple unlike other companies actually let the consumers and the media know the exact numbers. But 17 million iPad’s sold in 3 months is not all.



That is right, since the iPad launched in 2010 Apple has sold 84 million iPad’s in total. That does not sound like a lot at first but only because I just gave a number that said they sold 17 million in 3 months. What that tells me though is the iPad is picking up steam in the sales department. Is that even possible? Well yeah because Tim Cook talks about that next.

We sold more iPad’s last quarter than any PC maker sold of their entire PC lineup. - Tim Cook

Market Share

So in 2011 the iPad had 62% market share, this number is probably very deceiving to most analyst. I bet in 2010 Apple probably had 90%+ of the market share because even though other tablets existed before the iPad, nobody was actually buying them. After the iPad the influx of tablets on the market started popping-up threefold. Apple didn’t invent tablet computing they just created the market for the tablet that every other electronic company decided they better jump on the coattails of Apple while the getting was good.



Even though Apple probably lost market share from 2010 - 2011 due to the influx of cheap tablets the consumers showed that they would not be fooled by the knockoffs and Apple has started to take some of that market share back. When you think about the tablet market it is really amazing what Apple has created. If you were to walk into a Best Buy in 2010 the only tablet you would have seen was the iPad. If you walked into Best Buy in 2011 you would have seen the iPad and probably a few Samsung tablets and maybe a couple other off brand tablets that nobody ever bought. Not that many were buying the Samsung tablets in fact a lot those who did buy the Samsung tablets ended up returning them because they thought they were iPad’s. This is not about the slavishly copying of Apple products that Samsung committed. This is about the iPad and the market Apple created for tablets. Walk into a Best Buy today and you will see aisle upon aisle of tablets now. Matter of fact my last trip to Best Buy I counted 4 aisle of tablets, 2 rows front and back of every type of tablet imaginable. On top of those 2 rows Samsung had their own kiosk of tablets that featured their flagship tablets and they were conveniently placed next to the Apple kiosk in the Best Buy[1]. Then you had the iPad section which if I remember correctly only had 3 iPad’s on display, I believe a black WiFi, Black WiFi + Cellular and a white WiFi only. This next stat still has me rather perplexed.



Even though the other tablets make up 32% of the market share their web traffic only make up 9% vs. the 91% by the iPad. The question remains as Tim Cook so elegantly put it:

I don’t know what these other tablets are doing - Tim Cook

What are those other tablet owners doing? I suspect a large number of those tablet purchases are the Kindle Fire. I assume most of the fine folks who purchased the Kindle Fire maybe did so to use it as a colored eReader and are only using the Fire for that purpose. Maybe they are not using the Fire as an actual tablet computer? Maybe 6 months from now we will have a better picture of the tablet market now that the Nexus 7 is in the hands of many tablet lovers. I have a feeling these numbers will change a bit since the N7 is really popular and probably thought of more as a small tablet and not just a colored eReader.

The Enterprise

Tim Cook presented this fascinating statistic yesterday that 94% of the Fortune 500 companies were deploying iPad’s into their businesses. They were developing enterprise applications that met the specific needs of the individual businesses. This is great news for the iPad in the Enterprise it is real step toward defeating the dominance of Windows in the workplace. Not only the enterprise but also in education, I am reading stories everyday of K–12 or Universities who are now deploying the iPad into their system replacing the bulky desktops and books in favor of the iPad.

Some of those businesses that are deploying the iPad:

The Apps

That is right, the App Store now features over 250,000 iPad specific applications out of the over 700,000 total applications in the App Store. Those applications are getting better and better, and more powerful with every app that I download. I feel the disparity between what I need to do on my iMac and what I can do on my iPad is shrinking. You can thank the application developers for that.

iPad Taking Over

There are now 400 million iOS devices out in the world and over 20% of them are iPad’s. That is very impressive considering the iPad has only been on the market for 2 1/2 years vs. the iPhone and the iPod Touch have both been on the market since 2007. If Apple does introduce a mini iPad next month it will be an interesting next 12 months that is for sure.

I can see the iPad as the #1 seller 2 years from now, I think the fact that most people can walk into not only an Apple store but also stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Sam’s and pickup an iPad with no 2 year service agreement and get the same terrific iOS experience that you can from an iPhone and get an even better experience than you would on iPod Touch will be the determining factor in the iPad reigning supreme. I also think the fact that businesses will deploy an iPad into their IT departments will also boost the iPad above the current king of iOS, the iPhone.

If you have not done so yet be sure to watch the Keynote for yourself on Apple.com.

Have a comment about this article? Try me on Twitter @iCrizzo.

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1. I do not have an actual Apple Store in my area so Apple has their own section in Best Buy which features most of their products and 1 Apple Genius.  ↩