It's hard to find good sales numbers on specific tablets. 4.6 million Nexus 7's were sold[1] in 2012, but I haven't found data on how many of the 2012 model sold in 2013, or how many of the 2013 model have sold so far. Still, this is one model that appears to be selling in numbers nobody would have predicted for an Android tablet at the beginning of 2012.
The iPad mini, however, is more difficult to judge. Apple hasn't released sales numbers that don't lump the mini in with other models, suggesting it's been a failure and they're afraid to reveal how few have actually sold[2]. A failure by Apple's standards might be a runaway success by most other's standards, but the mini clearly isn't flying off the shelves the way an Apple device in a new form-factor should. It's specs were disappointing and it offered questionable value, so this isn't a huge surprise. I would bet good money that the next gen mini will treat the form-factor properly instead of giving it sloppy seconds, but consumers may have negative associations with the iPad mini brand that need to be overcome.
Personally, I think Apple really underestimated the appeal of the 7" tablet. A bigger screen is certainly nicer for some things, but 7" is perfect for reading ebooks and the smaller size of 7" tablets make them truly portable and comfortable to use hand-held. I'd love to see good sales numbers to see if it really is 7" tablets that are boosting Android sales and dragging down Apple's sales. If so, this might be a situation where an under-served market allowed an agile opponent to bust into a market firmly held by a single dominant incumbent!
Apple in general doesn’t report how different models of a product sell. That it also didn’t for the iPad mini doesn’t indicate anything. (The only exception I can think of is the iPod touch were Apple also didn’t report any specific numbers but at least said that most iPods sold were iPod touches. I think it’s quite obvious why Apple felt compelled to be a bit more specific in this case, what with the iPod touch running iOS and being part of the ecosystem, unlike all other iPods. Other than that Apple will report how many portable Macs they sold, how many desktop Macs they sold, how many iPods they sold, how many iPads they sold and how many iPhones they sold.)
That Business Insider article is pure bologna, no doubt written by someone who is quite clueless about how Apple typically reports its numbers. You can go back through apple.com/pr and look at everything they typically release after launches and Apple’s pattern becomes quite clear.
(I also think it’s general consensus that the iPad mini is quite successful. Which is not saying anything about hypotheticals. If you measure Apple against the size of the market they clearly could sell more. Can they, do they have to, do they want to and can Apple’s iPad business still be considered a success if it doesn’t are then, I feel, the most relevant questions.)
Ah! Cool, didn't remember that. Do you know any other examples? I couldn't think of any, but it's very possible that my memory is somewhat spotty in that regard (but the general paatern of what Apple does and doesn't release is nevertheless clear.)
"If so, this might be a situation where an under-served market allowed an agile opponent to bust into a market firmly held by a single dominant incumbent!"
This is silly. The reason Android sells more tablets, globally, is the same reason Android sells many more phones: Apple doesn't compete in the bottom of the market.
Apple makes tablets that sell for $329 to $929. If you limited yourself to that market you'd find that Apple sells the overwhelming majority of such tablets.
If OTOH you limited your comparison to "tablets under $300" (an actual "hot link" at Amazon) you'll find that zero of these tablets are from Apple and hence Apple's market share for this part of the tablet market is a (perhaps shocking) 0%. You'd find a few windows and linux tablets but mostly 95%+ Android tablets (including forks).
This does not mean Apple has been outfoxed by a more agile opponent. Apple presumably could ship a lower quality tablet at every price point from $50 to $250 with their eyes closed.
> A failure by Apple's standards might be a runaway success by most other's standards, but the mini clearly isn't flying off the shelves
I worked within a flagship Apple Store during the mini launch and the after, and I saw this exact thing happen first hand, especially around Christmas. We called it the year Apple ruined Christmas because the demand far exceeded the stock and many weren't able to give the Christmas gifts they were hoping for.
Although I no longer work directly with the sales, I would guess the mini accounts for about 30-45% of iPad sales?
The lack of retina display really dampened things. The fairly rapid launches of 3 and 4 probably also hurt it. I think a model with retina display, where you have a market with a 12+ month old iPad, will do well.
What's funny about the iPad mini, at least from my perspective, is that my daughter made that her first savings goal and achieved it with impressive speed. And she uses the device constantly. In fact among carrots and sticks with her, the most effective stick is to put the iPad in timeout.
Her coaches use it to record video of her routines for instant feedback in practice. She checks for her homework on learning point (I do still have unfond memories of learningpoint/blackboard). We are military, and she keeps up with friends from all over the country. Via Wi-Fi she can call her Grammy, mom or me. In some ways it is more functional then my full-size retina iPad. Except I really like having a full-page PDF on the iPad.
The other things that's funny is that she could have had a Nexus 7 tablet with a better screen, a faster processor, and more memory for quite a lot less money. But of course, it wouldn't say "Apple". This is a big part of the reason that Android is catching up or better. It's not just the low end of the market, it's also setting the bar at the high end for features and performance , and at a better price.
Steve Jobs drew his own red-line over 7 inches being too small for tablet, due to the size of hands. I've heard that parroted back at me by apple fans a few times. This is why the ipad-mini is decidedly not a 7" screen, but an 8" (7.9) screen.
They didn't want fragmentation of the iPad apps. Having it 8" instead of 7" makes the regular iPad optimized apps look better. Reducing the size to 7" levels would have some usability issues.
I'm sorry, but that BI reference is an absolute joke.
You think Apple underestimated the appeal of 7-inch tablets? Is that so? Do you really believe that people are saying "Man, this 7-inch is so much better than a 7.9-inch" They're probably not. If consumers are buying other tablets it's likely due to price.
In addition, the report itself said that “The 7.9-inch iPad mini represented about 60% of total iPad shipments and 49% of iPad-related device revenues in the quarter.” That should tell you that the mini IS more popular than the larger iPad.
I really have to call you out on the "specs were disappointing and offered questionable value" point you made. I, myself own an iPad mini. In fact, I sold my larger iPad and solely use the mini now. I can't tell you how many friends pick up my mini and say "oh my God, I want this." Not a single one of them have said "How much RAM does this have?" or "What's the resolution of the screen?" Those are both things that I don't believe the general consumer care about. They want it to "just work" and the iPad mini does that very well.
Finally, the report doesn't go into detail as to what they define as an Android tablet. Is it a cheap $79 dollar Walmart tablet (http://www.walmart.com/ip/Nextbook-7-Tablet-with-8GB-Memory-...)? Is it Kindle Fire's, Nooks, and Nexus 7's? It's likely that they're considering all of them and to that I would say that not all tablets are created equal. In fact, just like the smartphone market, there's enough evidence out there that suggests that nearly 50% of "Android smartphones" are actually shitty phones running Android, nearly incapable of accessing apps and can barely access the internet.
The point of all this is to say that that "report" is pretty deceiving and doesn't paint the whole picture. I dunno about you but I almost never see anyone using a tablet other than an iPad. I see more e-ink Kindles than I see true Android tablets.
Well, if I buy a tablet of roughly that form factor, I'm going to buy a 7 inch over a 7.9 inch because a 7 inch fits in the inside breast pocket of my coats and a 7.9 inch does not. As it happens, I'd prefer an Android anyway for a few reasons, but just saying that there can certainly be a real, substantial, practical difference between 7" and 7.9".
I never understood these comparisons. How can we reasonably compare a hardware product (iPad) with an operating system that runs on a large number of other tablets? I understand that it's a convenient "us vs them" analogy, but it makes no sense at closer examination.
The comparison isn't of the hardware product, it's of the operating systems. Developers want to know what the installed base and rate of change for users of each OS is so they know the target market size to make decisions like which OS to develop an app for first. Consumers want to know what other consumers are doing because they don't want to get stuck with a device (like a Blackberry) that the market is abandoning and no one is making third party apps for.
These numbers are kind of useless when Apple is weeks away from refreshing their iPad line-up. You'll see Apple back in the lead in market share after that. Developers will continue to target iOS first because of that and because iOS users pay for apps.
> You'll see Apple back in the lead in market share after that
So, at least we've come a long way from "There's not a tablet market, there's an iPad market".
I think one of the more useful measures of where we are at could be "the types of comments used by Apple fans to justify why Apple is still leading" metric.
The flood of lower end devices always made this a matter of when. What matters to developers is what to develop for first, and that will remain iOS for a myriad of reasons. Apple will be leading in this one measure once they release new iPads. In other important measures that developers consider, like how much iPads are used compared to the rest, it's not even close.
Notice that the post I was originally responding to was questioning why this information was useful. The answer is that some people rely on data in preference to speculative assumptions.
>These numbers are kind of useless when Apple is weeks away from refreshing their iPad line-up.
These numbers are the latest numbers. If you think they'll turn around then you can feel vindicated if they do, but for now the facts are the facts.
They're the latest numbers but still useless for any developer to make an assumption based on. Market share will obviously drop off going into the new refresh cycle. It's happened every time.
There is a difference between subject to change and "useless." The numbers are still quite valid to use to compare to the numbers present just prior to the previous Apple refresh cycle, which obviously tells us that Android has been gaining ground.
Because iOS is just a an OS that runs on a very limited number of tablets because of a decision by iOS's owners. There's absolutely no reason that iOS couldn't be just another tablet OS.
Because Apple's business model isn't selling an OS to a third-party OEM, it's selling you a piece of hardware using a proprietary OS as a selling point. And has been for decades.
So? If Apple's goal is to increase total number of devices running iOS, then they have a good model to follow (Android). If it's to eventually end up in second place again in yet another market they should have owned, then they can feel free to keep on keeping on. There's nothing but their business model keeping them from doing it.
Apple monetizing apps is ancillary to their monetizing of hardware. The real accomplishment is how Apple has managed to dominate market share while competing against a gamut of OEMs with a free OS and much lower price points. Apple may not be the leader in market share going into a refresh of iPads, but that's a temporary problem and not a reflection of the trend.
But from a developer's perspective, what matters is where the customers are. I still think in the near term, paid apps are a bigger market on the ipad but if your application is free, then android may be a better bet for initial deployment.
>>There's absolutely no reason that iOS couldn't be just another tablet OS.
There are many reasons. The primary one is that having the OS run on your own hardware allows you to have much tighter control over the user experience. After all, user experience is one area where iOS has always dominated Android.
No disagreement about user experience, but this constant goal post moving "it's total numbers!" then when that shifts it's suddenly "this is comparing OSs to devices!" is unbelievably tiresome to see played out over and over again.
Next up will be some other metric that will be overcome like profitability, or total apps purchased or app store size or whatever. Apple has simply made a decision and stuck with it and the result is that it limits their share of the market over a more versatile platform.
> After all, user experience is one area where iOS has always dominated Android.
I don't think that's true at all. As of ICS, Android is much better. Especially considering the horrible state of notifications on iOS and the siloed nature of apps. And usability took a serious hit in the move from iOS 6 to 7.
I think the parent's comment is better phrased as "There's no constraint preventing iOS from being just another tablet OS."
Apple consciously refuses to decouple their hardware from their software (and I agree with you that the iOS experience is better than the Android one, although I don't think it's an objective truth).
Comparing iOS adoption to Android adoption is not some universally indicative metric (I'll bet all the money in my pockets that many more iPad owners know what "iOS" means than Android tablets know what "Android" means, which is incredibly important when you're, say, trying to build an ecosystem) but it is still important (I'm a developer with limited time resources! Do I spend X hours building an Android port?)
In term of global sales, Android tablet could be more than iPad these days. In term of usage, iPad would be much more than all Android tablets [1]. Additionally, an iPad has 2-3x life span than Android tablet on average (I has used over a dozen tablets). I seriously don't like to see so many low-quality tablets thrown into market. You are much better of buying second hand iPad.
I'd love to see this broken up by what I'd call "true tablets" (like the Nexus 7) and devices that are marketed primarily for media consumption by the media producers (Nook HD/Kindle Fire).
In the wild (I'm talking Houston, not SF or NYC, so maybe it's a different story), I see very few non-iPad tablets. I can't honestly recall seeing more than maybe 1 out of 50 or 100. I do see tons of Android phones, however. (Maybe it can be explained that Android tablet users are less likely to show off, and keep the device in their home/office?)
My anecdote, I know lots of people who own some kind of Android tablet but no iOS device and lots of people who own iOS devices who own at least one Android tablet.
I'm so tired of the horse race analogies. Competition in business is more like an elaborate multi decade gymnastics competition than a horse race. Both Google and Apple are doing a great job executing their different business models. It's like two gymnasts doing very different routine and ending up with close or tied scores even though their points on individual things may greatly differ.
I love my Galaxy III Android phone. Incredibly nice as a phone, social media, games, and even has a neat little Java IDE to build apps right on the phone.
I was waiting for the new Nexus 7 and when it was released I made a snap decision to stay with iPad, giving my iPad 2 to a family member and buying an iPad mini.
For one thing, it is simply more fun to own one of each types of device. Way more fun.
Secondly, I have workflows in place on my iPad (e.g., working on book manuscripts using leanpub + dropbox + IA Writer; ssh into my servers) that I can also do on My Android phone, but I like working on the iPad.
For consumers, having both OS options can only be a good thing.
"To begin with, no single manufacturer of tablets comes close to Apple in terms of volume. Android as a whole may sell more devices than Apple, but the ecosystem is split between the likes of Samsung, Amazon, Asus and others. The full-size iPad and the iPad Mini are still the best-selling models out there. Android may have slightly more of the pie, it has to be split more ways."
As usual the title implies one thing and the articles says another. The usual Apple is doomed story to gain some additional pageviews to sell ads. Same old same old.
Android will always have a larger install base than iOS. iPads are aimed at the upper end of the market, while Android is installed on a wide variety of tablets aimed at different budgets and form factors. This is far from an an apples-to-apples comparison. While the Android fanboys love numbers like this, it says exactly nothing about the advantages of either OS. Both platforms have enough market share that both must be targeted for apps to be successful anyway, so specific market share really doesn't matter.
But it is important to mention these things. It's needed as a counter weight to the message that was spread not long ago by people like Gruber, "there is no tablet market, only the ipad market"
It seems rather silly to report sales numbers in a market where nobody reports sales numbers. For an actual measurable statistic, we should look at usage numbers. And in that race, iOS tablets are far far ahead of android tablets.
I hate these types of articles because they bring out the worst of HN. Accusations of fanboys and vitriol over both sides are spewed and incomprehensible arguments rule.
Look at all these Android fanboys upvoting a nonsense article to the front-page. tsk tsk...
>>The iPad, long the best-selling tablet in the world, has received a check to its dominance: Android has taken the lead in both tablets sold and in the money people paid for them.
Yea, when you flood the market with cheap, shitty tablets it's easy to "take the lead." The thing that is often forgotten is that the money made from iPad sales goes directly into Apple's coffers, whereas Android sales benefit mostly the manufacturers. And just like with iPhone vs. Android, we see which devices are actually used:
The iPad mini, however, is more difficult to judge. Apple hasn't released sales numbers that don't lump the mini in with other models, suggesting it's been a failure and they're afraid to reveal how few have actually sold[2]. A failure by Apple's standards might be a runaway success by most other's standards, but the mini clearly isn't flying off the shelves the way an Apple device in a new form-factor should. It's specs were disappointing and it offered questionable value, so this isn't a huge surprise. I would bet good money that the next gen mini will treat the form-factor properly instead of giving it sloppy seconds, but consumers may have negative associations with the iPad mini brand that need to be overcome.
Personally, I think Apple really underestimated the appeal of the 7" tablet. A bigger screen is certainly nicer for some things, but 7" is perfect for reading ebooks and the smaller size of 7" tablets make them truly portable and comfortable to use hand-held. I'd love to see good sales numbers to see if it really is 7" tablets that are boosting Android sales and dragging down Apple's sales. If so, this might be a situation where an under-served market allowed an agile opponent to bust into a market firmly held by a single dominant incumbent!
-----
[1]http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Google-Nexus-7-Tablet-Sales...
[2]http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-mini-sales-2012-11