Apple's Tablet Market Share Decreases During Q3

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freggo

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A repeat of the 1980 in the making.
Apple missed the boat when the world switched from the C-64 and Atari home computers to PCs while Apple went from the 2c to the Lisa and Mac. Their closed up and locked down Hardware/Software approach has resulted in them being a non-player in the PC world with a laughable market share and no substantial profits.
Now the same is likely to happen again. Apple is currently still riding high on a cash cushion from past profits but watch it erode as their iPhone/iPad market shares continue to fall; and the stock value will follow soon.

Before you know it they will again be in need of someone like Steve Jobs to rescue them.

 
At some point fashions will change and the current crop of Apple styled products will no longer be vogue. How many companies will be so kind as to showcase their innovative new features to a company that behaves as Apple has? They can no longer claim innocence or the underdog, and have shown what they do with power.
 
With the gigantic middle finger shown to iPad3 buyers by releasing the 4th one a few months later and the lackluster screen on the Mini this is no surprise. Thank god for the brainwashed followers, otherwise Apple would be in deep trouble.
 

halcyon

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[citation][nom]house70[/nom]With the gigantic middle finger shown to iPad3 buyers by releasing the 4th one a few months later and the lackluster screen on the Mini this is no surprise. Thank god for the brainwashed followers, otherwise Apple would be in deep trouble.[/citation]
House come on, the 4th gen iPad is simply nice. I should know, I just got one. Brainwashed? No? Ignorant? No. I spent $750 on what was supposed to be one of the hottest Android tablet offerings, the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity & dock only to be greated by a dead pixel out of the box and laggy performance, even with JellyBean. Its 2012, we should be past dead pixels completely now. If Apple can do it Asus should be able to as well. How many cores does it take not to have laggy performance on an Android tablet? I thought 4 cores would be enough, apparently its not (even in "Performance Mode"). Shortage of RAM? Maybe, but why, RAM is cheap...and the tablet did cost $600 so that's inexcusable. I tried to ignore these shortcomings but why should I live with that? On the other hand the 4th gen iPad I replaced the Infinity with has no dead pixels and is just plain nasty fast and liquidy-smooth, as expected for the price. To be completely fair, the apps on the Apple App Store are more plentiful and generally of higher quality than the Android tablet counterparts. ...sheesh, you can't even get a classic game like Monopoly for an Android tablet, even the pinball offerings don't compare favorably to their Apple App Store counterparts. I don't always want to first-person-shoot rag-heads or hunt for IEDs.

I know its unpopular here to say anything about Apple that is not negative but I've done my research and actually spent my money comparing products (unlike many of the haters here). The 4th gen iPad is a nice product. So I happily gave up the ability to arrange my icons in a pentagon and install weather widgets for the serious performance and quality of the iPad. Oh, let's discuss the browsing experience. Who do you know that wants to load the mobile edition of a website on a 10" screen? Why would anyone, anywhere, at anytime want to do that? You'd think the Android developers would ask that question too. But no, despite ad-ons and default settings to the contrary half-to-3/4 of the time I had to manually load the desktop editions of websites every time I browse the web or come here to THG. ...got very old very fast. ...no, it didn't matter if it was the native browser, Chrome, or Firefox...same issues. In fact, you can barely log in to THG forums for the cursor not wanting to allow you to input your password. I have no such issues with the 4th gen iPad. Looks like Apple's engineers were able to figure that out. All Android devices aren't as refined as the SGS3, which I learned the hard way. I accept that my experiences hopefully are not the norm and I'm no Apple fan-person, but like I said, I've spent my money and time using the competition. For me, the iPad wins.
 

teh_chem

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[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]House come on, the 4th gen iPad is simply nice. I should know, I just got one. Brainwashed? No? Ignorant? No. I spent $750 on what was supposed to be one of the hottest Android tablet offerings, the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity & dock only to be greated by a dead pixel out of the box and laggy performance, even with JellyBean. Its 2012, we should be past dead pixels completely now. If Apple can do it Asus should be able to as well. How many cores does it take not to have laggy performance on an Android tablet? I thought 4 cores would be enough, apparently its not (even in "Performance Mode"). Shortage of RAM? Maybe, but why, RAM is cheap...and the tablet did cost $600 so that's inexcusable. I tried to ignore these shortcomings but why should I live with that? On the other hand the 4th gen iPad I replaced the Infinity with has no dead pixels and is just plain nasty fast and liquidy-smooth, as expected for the price....snip...[/citation]
It's interesting--I'm an android user almost universally (phone and tablet are android, but I also use an ipod touch for casual netflix/youtube watching at home). I couldn't imagine being locked down by iOS for my daily usage (phone/tablet), but I also hate hate hate the inherent issues that manifest in android because of the thing it's touted for: hardware platform freedom. For now I tolerate the vast discrepancies in user experience across android only because it gives me a bit more freedom to do what I want to do in an easier way than iOS could (I know it's beating a dead horse, but live widgets are a huge time-saver/multi-tasker for me). That alone makes it worth it.

That being said, I got an ASUS TF101--I've never been happy with it. I got luckier than you hardware-wise, but man, ASUS' team has continually screwed the pooch with firmware updates. I think 4 sequential ICS "updates" broke my tablet in one fashion or another, in a way that pretty much made it useless. That was a headache. Finally they got it right.

The sad thing is, I've found that despite getting the dock for my TF as well, I hardly use it for anything "productivity" related. I generally end up browsing the web, watching my own videos, or watching Netflix or amazon prime videos. As such, I decided that my next tablet device is going to be the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 w/4G. I hated the original Fire for its locked down OS, but then I noticed that for anything I wanted to do, it did it and did it in a much more stable fashion than a "full" android tablet. And I imagine my feelings are much in the same vane as how some people favor ipads over android tablets. It's a sad commentary on the android ecosystem as a whole, and I suspect one reason why google is finally making "their own" android tablets.

So while I still could never rely on iOS for my mobile devices, I absolutely understand and agree with your perspective.
 

belardo

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[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]A repeat of the 1980 in the making.Apple missed the boat when the world switched from the C-64 and Atari home computers to PCs while Apple went from the 2c to the Lisa and Mac. Their closed up and locked down Hardware/Software approach has resulted in them being a non-player in the PC world~~[/citation] You don't know what you're talking about. The IBM PC was planned on being an open system. MS caused that because they out-smarted IBM. The fact you said "Lisa" as if it was an important computer shows that. The C64 came out After the Atari 8bits. Amiga always did better than Atari ST.

 
[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]Oh, let's discuss the browsing experience. Who do you know that wants to load the mobile edition of a website on a 10" screen? Why would anyone, anywhere, at anytime want to do that? You'd think the Android developers would ask that question too. But no, despite ad-ons and default settings to the contrary half-to-3/4 of the time I had to manually load the desktop editions of websites every time I browse the web or come here to THG. ...got very old very fast. ...no, it didn't matter if it was the native browser, Chrome, or Firefox...same issues. In fact, you can barely log in to THG forums for the cursor not wanting to allow you to input your password. I have no such issues with the 4th gen iPad.[/citation]
I use Dolphin on my phone and have absolutely no trouble getting full sites to load (yes, I prefer them even on a 4.3" screen). I will agree that it is nigh-impossible to log into tomshardware.com, but since that is the only site that I have problems with, I'm more than happy to blame them.
 
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I'll bet all the ipad 4 buyers are feeling buyers remorse right about now because of the nexus 10.
Can't beat that JB smoothness and that 2560x1600 screen.
 

robochump

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I love my iPad but good competition will always induce companies to make better improvements to their products in order to get to our wallets sooner rather than later.
 

robochump

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[citation][nom]house70[/nom]With the gigantic middle finger shown to iPad3 buyers by releasing the 4th one a few months later and the lackluster screen on the Mini this is no surprise. Thank god for the brainwashed followers, otherwise Apple would be in deep trouble.[/citation]

Spoken like a true iHater. Yeah people are getting Apple products just because its Apple and not because it is a superior product...lol. I guess yall prefer to buy your products from foreign companies.
 

halcyon

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[citation][nom]keionx[/nom]I'll bet all the ipad 4 buyers are feeling buyers remorse right about now because of the nexus 10.Can't beat that JB smoothness and that 2560x1600 screen.[/citation]
Oh no, not at all. I love my iPad 4.
 

Vladislaus

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[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]House come on, the 4th gen iPad is simply nice. I should know, I just got one. Brainwashed? No? Ignorant? No. I spent $750 on what was supposed to be one of the hottest Android tablet offerings, the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity & dock only to be greated by a dead pixel out of the box and laggy performance, even with JellyBean. Its 2012, we should be past dead pixels completely now. If Apple can do it Asus should be able to as well. How many cores does it take not to have laggy performance on an Android tablet? I thought 4 cores would be enough, apparently its not (even in "Performance Mode"). Shortage of RAM? Maybe, but why, RAM is cheap...and the tablet did cost $600 so that's inexcusable. I tried to ignore these shortcomings but why should I live with that? On the other hand the 4th gen iPad I replaced the Infinity with has no dead pixels and is just plain nasty fast and liquidy-smooth, as expected for the price. To be completely fair, the apps on the Apple App Store are more plentiful and generally of higher quality than the Android tablet counterparts. ...sheesh, you can't even get a classic game like Monopoly for an Android tablet, even the pinball offerings don't compare favorably to their Apple App Store counterparts. I don't always want to first-person-shoot rag-heads or hunt for IEDs. I know its unpopular here to say anything about Apple that is not negative but I've done my research and actually spent my money comparing products (unlike many of the haters here). The 4th gen iPad is a nice product. So I happily gave up the ability to arrange my icons in a pentagon and install weather widgets for the serious performance and quality of the iPad. Oh, let's discuss the browsing experience. Who do you know that wants to load the mobile edition of a website on a 10" screen? Why would anyone, anywhere, at anytime want to do that? You'd think the Android developers would ask that question too. But no, despite ad-ons and default settings to the contrary half-to-3/4 of the time I had to manually load the desktop editions of websites every time I browse the web or come here to THG. ...got very old very fast. ...no, it didn't matter if it was the native browser, Chrome, or Firefox...same issues. In fact, you can barely log in to THG forums for the cursor not wanting to allow you to input your password. I have no such issues with the 4th gen iPad. Looks like Apple's engineers were able to figure that out. All Android devices aren't as refined as the SGS3, which I learned the hard way. I accept that my experiences hopefully are not the norm and I'm no Apple fan-person, but like I said, I've spent my money and time using the competition. For me, the iPad wins.[/citation]
Dead pixels is something that happens from time to time. Just because your Transformer came with a dead pixel that doesn't mean that all of them came with the pixels. The same also applies to Apple because there are iPads/iPhones/iPods with dead pixels.

The "problem" you're referring of web pages being loaded in the mobile version on tablets has nothing to do with Android. The websites are the one to blame. The Android tablet and phone browsers, even though identical, have different user agents. The phone android browser has in the user agent "Android Mobile", and the tablet browser has "Android". Unfortunately most web pages search for the string "Android" in the user agent of the browser and immediately show the mobile website. They don't bother to check if Mobile is present in the user agent string or not, hence why pages are shown in the mobile version.

With Firefox a website will always show the mobile version, because the user agent is identical in both tablets and phones.

The user agent in the case of Apple is more easy for websites to show the full version because the strings that differentiate them is "iPhone", "iPod", "iPad". So most websites search for iPod, iPhone in the user agent string and if they don't find it they default to the full version.

You have a solution of course, change the user agent string of your device so that it matches one from a desktop browser, and your problem is solved.
 
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