
Sales of obscure game consoles vs. non-iPad tablets - aaronbrethorst
http://www.marco.org/2011/08/12/tablets-vs-obscure-video-game-consoles
======
davcro
Last night I visited my uncle, a 50 year old rancher in Eastern Colorado. He
wanted to show me videos of him calf-roping with a rodeo celebrity. I was very
surprised when he brought out a Samsung Galaxy Tablet. This man is extremely
computer illiterate and prides himself on ignoring modern technology. But wow
did he love that tablet. He used it for everything (doesn't own a computer).

This incident convinced me that non-iPad tablets have a fighting chance. I'd
like to see this exercise done again in one year. I believe non-iPads will
gain more traction.

------
MatthewPhillips
Marco's source for Android sales: Daring Fireball.

Another source, reported by BGR, has Android at 20% of tablet market share.[1]

[1][http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/12/android-steals-20-of-tablet-
ma...](http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/12/android-steals-20-of-tablet-market-from-
ipad-over-past-year/)

~~~
anigbrowl
Gruber bases his analysis on Google's biweekly publication of Android version
distributions, observing that for the two weeks ending July 14th, only 0.9% of
'live' Android installations were running Honeycomb (Android 3.0 or 3.1). This
is somewhat disingenuous, since the vast majority of Android apps run fine on
earlier versions (as used mainly on smartphones).

But let's go with his Honeycomb filter anyway; the latest update from Google
(August 1) shows Android 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 enjoying market shares of 0.4%,
0.7%, and 0.2% respectively, for a total of 1.3%. A 44% increase in Honeycomb
tablet shipments in the space of 2 weeks seems somewhat unlikely, but a
portion of that may result from 'back to school' sales; that's part of why I
bought mine.

The market is going to look very different in a year. I consider myself and
Android/Google fanboy, but when Motorola launched their Xoom last winter I
rolled my eyes at the absurdly high price along with everyone else. It seems
to me that the Honeycomb platform didn't get started properly until April,
when Acer and Asus lunched products that competed with the Ipad around the
$500 price point. Since then Samsung and Lenovo have released their own
Honeycomb devices, and Asus claims to be selling 400k/mo. of its Eee tablet.
Amazon's two forthcoming tablets are likely to sell well too, if the success
of the Kindle is any guide. I see a 4:1 use ratio between iPad and equivalent
Android tablets this time next year, maybe even 3:1 if Android products
cluster around the $400 price point. It took Android on smartphones a few
years to achieve market parity with Apple's offering.

As well as being good for consumers, this is good news for developers too.
From never buying any apps for my Android phone, I'm about to drop $20 today
(VPN/remote desktop, pro PDF tool, sketchbook). Although I only got the tablet
last Monday (an Eee btw), it's already drastically altering my use patterns,
and I feel safe in finally calling the death of the conventional PC. I find
the device infinitely more satisfying and productive to use than any laptop I
have ever owned, and can plug in a keyboard dock if I need to do a lot of
typing.

RIM and HP are the big losers here; I can't see any reason to buy into the
Blackberry OS or WebOS from either a consumer or business point of view.

~~~
nextparadigms
There are probably more sales of non-Honeycomb tablets than Honeycomb ones so
far. Non-Honeycomb tablets are still being launched right now, too. So yes
saying all Android tablets are the ones with Honeycomb is definitely
disingenuous.

------
fpgeek
Not including the Nook Color and other non-Honeycomb Android tablets (roughly
estimated around 3 million and 4 million respectively, IIRC) distorts the
results substantially, IMO.

Especially in a gaming context, my working definition of a tablet is:

1\. Does it have a touchscreen?

2\. Is it bigger than a smartphone?

3\. Can it play Angry Birds? (a)

The Nook Color and most other non-Honeycomb Android tablets easily qualify on
all 3 points.

(a) out-of-the-box with no rooting/hacking/etc

------
acangiano
If the iPad was on the chart: <http://awesomescreenshot.com/0b2ii1916>

~~~
watmough
Can you add the Sony PS2 on there too?

150 million units!

~~~
ryanwatkins
Yea, here's a better one. Game consoles, both popular and unpopular, with
tablets both popular and less popular :

[http://www.ryanwatkins.net/images/tablet-gameconsole-
sales.p...](http://www.ryanwatkins.net/images/tablet-gameconsole-sales.png)

------
jannes
This graph is meaningless. A lot of the game consoles probably had a lifespan
of at least one year (probably more). The Android tablets and the Playbook are
at most half a year old.

Knowing this it does not seem fair to me to compare their total sales figures.

~~~
mrmaddog
The Nintendo Virtual Boy "was released on July 21, 1995 [... and Nintendo]
discontinued it the following year" ... so no - it really was a flop that sold
more units than the playbook (to date).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy>

------
hnsmurf
It wasn't that long ago when you could have shown a similar chart with Android
phones.

~~~
lukifer
The tech may be similar, but they're fundamentally different markets. Almost
everybody needs a phone, but tablets are (currently) luxury items; and
carriers play a far smaller role in tablets, and often none at all.

------
digikata
This data would be more interesting if put into context with the category
leaders at the time. The ratio of lead sales console vs "obscure" console
would be nice. Even better if you can normalize time (avg monthly ratio) or
plot the ratio vs launch month. That would give some idea of the non-lead
tablets are on a similar sales trajectory as non-lead consoles.

~~~
masklinn
Some of them don't really fit in a given generation (the 32X was an addon to
the Mega Drive/Genesis released in the later years of the console, the Mega-CD
was an other addon released earlier to equip the Mega Drive against the just-
released TurboGraphx16-CD, the VirtualBoy did not really fit in any category).

* The Jaguar was a 5th gen console, the generation leader was the PlayStation with ~100 million units sold. The Jaguar sold under 250000, or 0.25% of the leader, other major entrants of the generation were the N64 (33m) and the Saturn (10m)

* The CD-i was something of a hybrid console/media player (only time I saw it used was a driving school, fwiw), it's nominally part of the 4th generation whose leader was the Super Famicom/Super NES. The CD-i sold ~500k units, the SNES sold 50 million. 1%. The the other major entrant of the generation was the Mega Drive/Genesis with 40m.

* The 3DO Interactive was a 5th gen console, sold 2 million, 2% of leader (PS)

* The TurboGraphx16, I think calling it a failure is a bit of a stretch: it was a 4th gen console and sold 10m units (~20% of generation leader) while it was pretty much only available in japan, where it performed quite well indeed. Comparatively the Saturn bombed _much_ harder (and the Dreamcast did even worse, compared to its generation leader)

~~~
Apocryphon
I wish they had added the Atari Lynx, and maybe some of the NeoGeo consoles.

------
aresant
To finish the exercise include iPhone / iPod Touch sales vs. the biggest
consoles ever released and the point is made.

eg: ~100m iPhones (most recent data I could find was through Q4 2010 for
aggregate):

Then compare to the top gaming platforms ever shipped:

PlayStation 154.59 million

Nintendo DS 147.86 million

Game Boy/Game Boy Color 118.69 million

Sony PlayStation 102.49 million

By that measuring stick iOS wins big vs. obscure consoles, but it also wins
vs. the biggest and best.

ref -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter.s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter.svg)

ref - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_game_conso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_game_consoles)

~~~
arcdrag
I think your logic is somewhat off, as you are considering playstation 1,2,3
to be different, while iPhone 1,2,3,4 are in the same bucket. Also consoles
are generally a one per household thing. Phones aren't.

~~~
tptacek
You make a good point, but PS1, PS2, and PS3 had different developer and third
party ecosystems, and iPhone 2/3/4 do not, to the same extent. There's a
confounding happening here to be sure, but it would not be accurate to square
iPhone 4 off against PS3, iPhone 3G/3GS against PS2, etc.

~~~
thezilch
While true on the Playstation platforms, the view of the iPhone ecosystem is
extremely inflated. Either all iPhones offer a similar experience across the
entire platform or not.

Most of my friends, with iPhones, have upgraded with each iteration of the
iPhone. They would each be counted three times, were we to consider each
iPhone iteration a separate platform. However, if we're being honest about the
experience being compatible across the iterations, is the triple dipping
really fair? Frankly, most of the same friends upgraded because they could
(afford to) and need shiny objects and that phone-dropped blemish gone -- "The
Apple Way."

I think you were going there, but I had to spell it out.

~~~
prewett
What happened to their old iPhone? If they sold it to someone who did not have
an iPhone already, it seems fair to still count it.

~~~
thezilch
That's fair, but I don't have a tone on that pulse -- guesstimate is they
upgraded their wive's iPhones or have no interest/knowledge/time to make a few
bucks on eBay. However, the premise of the argument is that there is too much
grey area. It is disingenuous to rank all iPhone sales against a gaming
platform; anecdotal results would lead me to believe a majority of smartphones
are not used as gaming devices.

------
martythemaniak
I wonder if marco reads HN? I'd be down for some action on longbets.com:

[http://martin.drashkov.com/2011/03/why-android-tablets-
will-...](http://martin.drashkov.com/2011/03/why-android-tablets-will-
dominate.html)

------
Pewpewarrows
So... a company's line of tablets that's been on the market for 16 months has
sold more total units than a company's line of tablets that's been on the
market for 6?

This is both new and exciting.

------
tensor
It's not clear to me why some people seem so keen on seeing a single tablet
seller. History has shown numerous times how monopolies are bad and how
competition benefits the consumer immensely.

The tablet market is new and still mostly luxury. I wouldn't place any bets
right now, even considering Apple's head start.

------
dstein
A Future Shop representative told me only 5 HP WebOS tablets were sold in all
Future Shop stores in Ontario.

~~~
a3camero
That seems quite unlikely. If only because of HP's actual business presence in
Ontario. Surely some of their Mississauga employees went to Futureshop...
<http://welcome.hp.com/country/ca/en/contact/office_locs.html>

------
floppydisk
From a "units" perspective it's interesting to see the comparison. However, I
think the article presents a false comparison between apples and oranges.

Gaming consoles appeal to a limited section of the market and will generally
ship less units than a mobile device. For instance, in a family of four, you
might find four cellphones and only one gaming system. Simple fact. I think a
more interesting comparison would be between tablet sales and mobile gaming
device sales.

------
Apocryphon
Now I'm tempted to get a TurboGrafx 16.

------
ck2
I see that as market potential, no?

Wait 'till 10 inch clone tablets hit $100 for xmas.

(ironically hitting the OLPC pricepoint goal)

------
vectorpush
_I didn’t include the iPad’s approximately 30 million units on here because it
distorted the graph’s scale too much._

Too bad, seems to me like this graph is meaningless otherwise. The comparison
is completely arbitrary.

~~~
masklinn
The point of the comparison seems pretty clearly made:

"Here's a bunch of console you probably never heard about. They flopped. They
completely failed.

Well these non-ipad tablets have done even worse so far. Enjoy the taste of
unadulterated failure."

~~~
vectorpush
_I think the point of the comparison is basically: here's a bunch of console
you probably never heard about. They flopped._

That's exactly my point. "Here's a bunch of [insert failed consumer
electronic] you've never heard of without regard for disparate product life
cycles or market environments". The data points are interchangeable so long as
they follow the guideline of "consumer electronic that existed at some point
in time and didn't sell well"

~~~
masklinn
> That's exactly my point.

No, you said adding the iPad sales to the graph would make it meaningful. What
meaning would it mean to the graph? It might change the meaning of the graph
to "the iPad sells well, other tablets don't" but then the consoles included
are meaningless.

The point of the graph is "these tablets don't sell for shit, here, compare to
sales of stuff which didn't sell for shit either".

~~~
vectorpush
I was being sarcastic when I said that adding iPad sales to the graph would
make it meaningful since a comparison of 2 to 30 doesn't require a graph for
digestion.

 _The point of the graph is "these tablets don't sell for shit, here, compare
to sales of stuff which didn't sell for shit either"_

Yes, a point that remains lost on me considering you could stack this year's
tablets up against a myriad of 20 year old devices and make an equally
meaningless comparison.

------
zmmmmm
Android and other tablets have barely hit the market yet. This seems like a
completely pointless comparison at this time.

------
Sniffnoy
I'm just surprised to learn that the VirtualBoy outsold the 32X and the
Jaguar...

~~~
r0s
For all it's problems, it's a very immersive, unique experience.

Who knows, a few generations more it could have become small and portable. At
the time, it looked like the future.

