Apple “iPad 3” Prototype May Be Circulating, But Don’t Look For It This Year
By Matt Peckham | Friday, September 16, 2011 at 11:01 am
It sounds like prototypes (yes, plural) of Apple’s iPad 3 may be floating around the “supply chain” already, but don’t look for the next-gen tablet this year, because…why, right? If you were sitting on 68.3% of the tablet market (according to the latest 2Q 2011 IDC report) and your nearest competitor (that would be Google’s Android) fell from 34% to 26.8% market share during the same period, where’s the fire?
That’s J.P. morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz’s reasoning, anyway. He’s just told Apple Insider that—not really a surprise here—his “conversations with industry insiders” indicate Apple’s third-generation iPad won’t arrive until sometime, 2012.
And some more captain-obvious thinking: “In our view, Apple should be in no rush,” says Moskowitz. “The other tablet entrants have stumbled so far, and that trend-line could persist deep into 2012.”
IDC’s view is slightly more pessimistic (for Apple). In yesterday’s report, the intelligence firm forecast Android OS’s tablet share would continue to plummet through 3Q 2011, then bounce back slightly in the fourth quarter. And analysts expect iOS’s market share to fall in 2012 as competing platforms start taking larger market share bites.
We’ve heard ‘iPad 3 coming in 2011’ rumors for months. Who knows where they start, or why. One of the last we covered involved the iPad getting a “better display” and support for 4G LTE networks. Some have even suggested the next iPad won’t be a true third-generation device so much as an expansion to the current-gen iPad family.
In the meantime, just sit back and watch empires crumble—like RIM’s, after the company announced yesterday that its Blackberry PlayBook sales had plummeted from 500,000 to just 200,000, and analysts downgraded the company to “underperform.” Ouch.
(This post republished from Techland)
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September 16th, 2011 at 6:49 pm
"IDC’s view is slightly more pessimistic (for Apple)."
IDC is in the business of generating BS market research data to use as anti-Apple propaganda.
September 17th, 2011 at 7:12 am
I wish the tech press would distinguish between tablets shipped vs. tablets sold. The linked techland article clearly states 200K Playbooks shipped, not sold. From what I see on the street there are iPads everywhere and not an Android tablet in sight, which makes me curious to see actual sales numbers.
September 17th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
The truth is, Apple has well over 90% market share in iPad-class devices. The part they don't have is mostly Honeycomb on 10 inch tablets, the only thing that really comes close enough to an iPad to be put in the same class. A 7-inch Android device that runs phone apps is a big smartphone or a big iPod touch -class device, a handheld media player with phone apps, not a way to run full-size PC and Web apps on the go like an iPad. To even be charitably described as iPad-class you would have to be running at least Android 3 to get full-size apps and GPU support, and you would have to have a full-size 10 inch PC class screen (those are the key features of iPad … everything but the screen, GPU, and full-size app platform is just a phone.)
The only other iPad-class device on the horizon is WinARM 8, and by horizon, I mean the horizon of Pluto. They started orbiting our sun only last week, and won't be on Earth for years. They are iPad 4 competitors, maybe. I have Windows 8 in a virtualizer for testing, and although Metro apps are remarkably clumsy, the Metro browser is easily the best IE ever, and there is a way for Windows developers to leverage their past work as they make all-new Metro apps, so on paper at least, WinARM 8 is promising. But it is really far away.
So they have no competitive pressure on iPad 3. They can release next June and ramp up over summer for back to school. But I wouldn't have expected it before March, 2012, anyway. They have a new chip, new fab, almost certainly new, cutting-edge display … a year is not an unreasonable time to wait for that.
September 18th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Anybody predicting a new iPad before March 2012 is arguing against history. Apple generally (almost rigorously) sticks to annual updates, and when it does vary almost always goes long (for example, with the iPhone this cycle). I'm glad you finally snuck in the "captain-obvious" snark, but that was after the break making wonder if you were really putting credence in the claims.
February 2nd, 2012 at 5:45 am
I am really excited about Ipad 3 !
I hope it will have a lot of features. 😉