Posted on 12/12/2011 2:59:53 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Apple Starts to Wobble 2 Months After Jobs' Death
Two months since the death of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the firm's management is showing signs of wobbling. The market shares of the iPhone and iPad are declining, and a series of patent-infringement lawsuits against rivals are not entirely going to plan.
Apple's competitors, who were caught on the back foot by the iPhone and iPad, are rapidly releasing products aimed at toppling the leader.
◆ Shrinking Demand
U.S. market research firm Canaccord Genuity recently said Apple's share of the American table PC market is forecast to fell from 74 percent in the third quarter to 53.2 percent in the fourth, with the decisive blow being dealt by Amazon's cheap Kindle Fire, which costs just US$199. The Kindle Fire is likely to grab some 20 percent of the market in only 1.5 month since its release on Oct. 15, on the back of the low price and access to Amazon's huge content.
The iPhone 4S, the last product overseen by Jobs, is also losing its appeal. Some dealers in Korea have already slashed prices by W100,000 (US$1=W1,146) since the product was launched in early November. The phone is also subject to complaints about the short battery life and static and disrupted signal during phone calls. But the main reason is probably that consumers are waiting for the release of the all-new iPhone5 later next year, since the 4S was merely an upgrade of the 4.
KT and SK Telecom, which market the iPhone 4S in Korea, have been caught off guard by lackluster demand, since Apple apparently asked dealers to buy a batch of at least 500,000 units. SK is said to be having trouble selling out the initial batch. And because of the popularity of fourth-generation LTE protocol, SK is focusing more on selling LTE phones than the 3G iPhone 4S. So far KT and SK have sold only a combined 300,000 units. An SK Telecom official said the gadget "has become a headache."
◆ Rivals Going on Offensive
A court in Mannheim, Germany ruled Friday that Apple infringed Motorola's third-generation mobile communications standards and banned the sale of the iPhone and iPad. That could increase the chances of Samsung Electronics, which has also filed a patent suit against Apple in the same town.
PC makers, which were badly hurt by the popularity of the iPhone and iPad, have also gone on the offensive, releasing so-called "ultrabooks," an industry standard for the next generation of laptops recently unveiled by Intel. Ultrabooks are half as thick and weigh half as much as existing laptops, and it takes just a third of the time to boot them.
But analysts say Apple's heyday is not over yet because it still boasts strong software and content. The app store, which opened in July of 2008, saw 10 billion accumulated downloads as of January of this year and reached 18 billion 10 months later, showing how much clout the company still wields among consumers.
You are right, it was a cheap shot, but that is the norm on these threads, sorry.{:-)
Barracuda Networks ..... I hear their advertisements. Thanks. I did not know that large businesses used hardware based security solutions.
Not just the phone version. Google has pretty much admitted that 3.x is crap too, and in their opinion the first decent version is 4.
I don’t know or care what version of Linux is behind the curtain on my TiVo; it’s so heavily customized that even though it’s basically a Linux computer, no one buys it as one or uses it as one. I note that Amazon isn’t marketing the Kindle Fire as a full-fledged tablet, and they’ve designed a custom interface that puts media consumption front and center, left and right.
I think a lot of folks are going to be happy with the Kindle Fire, if they go into it with the right expectations. There are a lot of folks who don’t follow technology like we do, who don’t know Gingerbread from Honeycomb, who will buy the Kindle with a realistic assessment of what it can do, and who will love it for that. After a while, they may come up with things that the Fire can’t do, things they never particularly thought of or wanted to do before. And then they’ll be ready to get a full tablet and hand the Kindle down to the kids.
3.X is nto what it should be, but its far better than 2.3 when talking about tablets... Amazing anyone would fall for the Fire knowing that.
I know most folks don’t follow tech, but the reality is you can go buy yourself a 2.3 or 2.2 tablet for less than the fire already, always have, and they haven’t really sold for a REASON... Amazon has marketing clout, but if FIRE is on top of 2.3, those reasons that other tablets with even larger form factors don’t move when on 2.X are going to shine through the Amazon Marketing Spit Shine, and a lot of folks are going to wind up disappointed.
Fire’s already suffering from user experience complaints, and in spite of their attempt to resolve, will continue to do so... 2.3 just isn’t going to cut it for what folks expect when they are sold what they are told is a tablet.
Apple's competitors, who were caught on the back foot by the iPhone and iPad, are rapidly releasing products aimed at toppling the leader.Yeah, that's what happened with the iPod, which is why it isn't sold anymore. /snicker
Ain't that the truth. Was in one today. Had to exchange one of our four, iPhone 4s. Had a bad mic. Walked out with a new one and a happy 17 year old daughter.
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