The iPad is killing laptop sales
US retailer cites 50 per cent fall
iPad sales are slashing laptop sales by as much as 50 per cent, according to the boss of US retailer Best Buy.
Announcing sales of $11.3bn and profits of $254m for the second quarter Best Buy's chief executive Brian Dunn said internal research showed half of potential laptop buyers had chosen an iPad instead of a traditional laptop.
Dunn told the Wall Street Journal that internal estimates revealed iPad sales "had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50%".
See here for Dunn's "clarification" of these remarks.
The chain pushed profits up 61 per cent even though sales in established stores were flat. It reckons iPads, Kindles and motion-sensing game add-ons from Sony and Microsoft will be the big sellers in the run-up to Christmas.
The company will make iPads available in all its 1,093 shops. Dunn said: "People are willing to disproportionately spend for these devices because they are becoming so important to their lives."
It even blamed Apple for losing 50 basis points of market share. The statement said: "The decline was primarily driven by the impact of lost traffic associated with constrained inventory during the initial iPad launch which adversely impacted traditional mobile computing traffic." ®
COMMENTS
Still not getting it eh?
Shame that the average IT bod still can't fathom why the iPad concept is so popular.
Maybe because I've been IT for twenty years and not two minutes I can see it's pretty obvious - ease of use.
If you give a program idea to any young programmer and ask them to write it, they'll arm it with as many buttons and gadgets as possible so it ends up looking very technical, full of jargon and is seriously complicated. Just look at the state of GIMP for example?
You can use the analogy of the Swiss Army Knife, let's add one more blade or function because we can. So it ends up big, unwieldy and can break down more easily.
Complete novices take a look at it and turn to the small neat looking pen knife in the shop instead. They can understand it just by picking it up and examining it.
There is a message screaming out there me thinks.
Apple has done an amazing thing, they've kept a close rein on their programmers enthusiasm and orchestrated them together to produce a device that looks easy to use and hey is easy to use.
Sure the average computer geek will not like the current restrictions. But it's now easy to use for everyone. This is something programmers often ignore as it's just that little bit more work for them. How often I've heard the programmers cry out - "Hey I've just got it working and now you want to change things just to make it easy to use?"
Often I've been brought in to improve a program that been specially written that technically works but has had no thought given to its layout or how a normal human being will use it.
A program like a piece of classical music needs a Orchestral Leader.
So far the only signs of any sort of control in the programmer community has been Ubuntu.
We need to wake up and think of designing programs or devices that will make it easy for the average person who knows nothing about them.
P.S.
No I don't own any Apple gear...
I guess
... that really, if you're just browsing for a laptop and only want to use it for surfing from the couch, checking facebook etc then the iPad is ideal and without the extra, possibly not needed and complicated gubbins of a traditional laptop.
Personally, I'll stick with a lappy as I prefer the options I have with it, but I can kind of see why the "non technical" buyers would opt for such a simple system.
P.S, I also suspect there's a fair amount of trend buying too where, say, a year ago the in thing was a small laptop or netbook, now those on the bleeding edge of fashion need an ipad.
"showed half of potential laptop buyers had chosen an iPad instead of a traditional laptop"
It does, of course, show nothing of the sort.
Firstly, and this I feel is quite important, correlation does not imply causation.
Secondly, there will be some interaction, but it's *way* more complex than "buyer choose x over y". *Every* single person I know who owns an iPad also owns a laptop, and continues to do so after buying the iPad. It is, however, quite likely that buying the iPad took enough out of their toy budget to delay replacing the laptop with a new one, for example.
Thirdly, it's far too early to say anything with any certainty.
Fourthly, did I mention that correlation does not imply causation?
GJC
I call Marketing Spin
They want to sell more of these overpriced iSlate tablet things.
<<The company will make iPads available in all its 1,093 shops. Dunn said: "People are willing to disproportionately spend for these devices because they are becoming so important to their lives.">>
This is advertising dressed as Market Research.
Tux, cos even though I mostly use WinXP, a penguin knows Marketing Hype when he reads it :-)
Excellently put
"We need to wake up and think of designing programs or devices that will make it easy for the average person who knows nothing about them."
From the point of view of the user, the ideal application interface is a single button labelled "Do what I fucking want", the further away from this ideal you get, the worse your UI is.
Users do not want options and widgets. Users hate choice. Users want stuff that just works.
The 'not getting it' crowd are a vocal demonstration of my personal theory - developed over the last decade or so - that for some reason, IT attracts a higher than statistically normal number of whiny arrogant halfwits. Oddly enough, this set intersects with the 'users are stupid' brigade.
