> COVER STORY
From l–r: iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab
According to Apple, in the nine months after its launch last April,
the company shipped 15 million iPads. The device generated US$9.5bn of revenue for Apple during that period. And now the company has just come out with its follow up, the
iPad 2 – a slimmer, lighter and faster version that also introduces a pair of cameras to allow video chat, which launched in the US on 11 March and will be available in Ireland from 25 March. Unveiling the new improved device earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted – not unreasonably – that 2010 had been the year of the iPad. “We’ve never had a product that has got off to that fast of a start,” he said. “In fact, many have said this is the most suc- cessful consumer product ever launched.” Jobs, who was widely reported as having described the tablet
project as “the most important thing I’ve ever done” prior to the launch of the first iPad, returned from medical leave to personally launch the iPad 2. Pointing out that the iPad has the advantage of having 65,000 apps available to it, he said the company’s com- petitors had been left “flummoxed”. However, while Apple certainly is the out-and-out leader in the
media tablet market, it is set to face increasing competition from the likes of Motorola, Samsung and HTC, particularly since the recent release of Google’s Android Honeycomb, a new operating system designed specifically for use with tablets.
The global market In its latestWorldwide Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker, International Data Corporation (IDC) revealed that 10.1 million media tablets were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2010, more than double the 4.5 million shipped in the third quarter. Incidentally, IDC defines media tablets as tablet form factor devices with colour displays larger than 5 inches and smaller than 14 inches running lightweight operating systems (such as Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS), rather than PC operating systems. IDC noted that Apple’s share of the market reduced from 93pc
in the third quarter to 73pc in the final quarter of 2010. It said Samsung’s Galaxy Tab was the main competitor in the final quar- ter, taking more than a 17pc share. The US, Western Europe and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) accounted for 89pc of all media
24 Marketing Age Volume 5 Issue 1 2011
tablets bought in the fourth quarter. “Strong holiday sales of media tablets were in line with IDC pro-
jections and strong consumer interest in the category while device vendors scrambled to offer products competitive with Apple's iPad and now iPad 2,” said Loren Loverde, vice-president, consumer device trackers, IDC. “Media tablets are on pace to reach ship- ments of roughly 50m units in 2011.” And the research company is expecting Apple to hold on to
around 70 to 80pc of the market, despite the launch of even more competing products during the year. “Samsung started shipping its 7-inch Galaxy Tab media tablet in 4Q10,” said the company. “Although its shipments into the channel were fairly aggressive, a lack of competitive pricing and ongoing competition from Apple stifled consumer demand. Samsung is expected to follow with a 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab with Android 3.0 Honeycomb later this year, but the refresh will have a tough time maintaining share as more competitors enter the market. “The recently launched Motorola Xoom is a worthy competitor in function, although the relatively high price is expected to be a bar- rier to gaining significant share.”
A new experience Colm Grealy, CEO of Irish-owned Digital Reach Group, believes the iPad has not only created a new market, but it has also changed the way in which people consume media. “For many of us when we looked at it originally, before we actually held one, it looked like a big iTouch. Until you actually popped it on and that screen lit up and you touched the very first link and all of a sudden it was a whole new experience in terms of interfaces being broken down, barriers to being able to access content were broken down; everything was just a touch away. “Just as the iPhone had changed the experience of using a
phone to connect to the internet, so too did the iPad change the experience of connecting to the internet where we’d needed a keyboard and a mouse up to that moment.” It has had a huge impact on the media sector, he says. “The first companies to embrace the iPad in terms of applications were companies like Time magazine and newspapers like The New York
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