What’s eating the iPad?

Is our love affair with Apple’s iPad over? Going by Australia’s reputation as early adopters of all things new in technology, and the fact that global growth all tablets has retreated from a spectacular 52.5 per cent to a miserable 7.2 per cent, you would have to think so.

According to research company IDC if it wasn’t for Android tablets, the market would actually be shrinking, which is another way of saying that Apple sales of iPads will actually fall – by 12.7 per cent in 2014, down to 64.9 million units -while Android tablet sales will grow – by 16 per cent to 159.5 million units.

IDC’s reasons for the decline are sensible and worrying, for Apple that is. It appears that Apple made such a good a product and people just aren’t upgrading at same frequency as smart phones, where the lifecycle is about two to three years. That’s about the same as a phone plan from one of the big telcos.

But you have to be blind not to realise that many phones have got bigger, including Apple’s new iPhone 6 plus, and can replicate most of the things that a tablet can do albeit still on a smaller screen. Add in the fact that many computing tasks are now able to be done on the phone and the tablet might just become a very good product looking for a market rationale.

As IDC point out in the AFR, “We believe the two major drivers for longer than expected tablet lifecycles are legacy software support for older products, especially within iOS, and the increased use of smart phones for a variety of computing tasks.”

Apart from the wonderful rendering able to be done on a tablet for both apps, and multi-media, there is still the question of how it is used in day-to-day operation. If you looking for information then the internet is still the place you want to be and the tablet can be cumbersome in this area. But what you don’t want is to be doing is using an app and being forced to wait for an edition update. People want all their information now!

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