[Touche]

Relevant:

> I’m not trying to cherry-pick data. I’m simply observing, based on Apple’s sales data and Google’s activation data, that the tablet market doesn’t today look anything like the smartphone market ever did. The iPad didn’t enter the tablet market. It created the tablet market. The iPad’s role in the tablet market much more closely resembles the iPod’s role in the digital music player market a decade ago than it does the iPhone’s role in the 2008 phone market.

> http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance

> There’s an iPad market, and the iPad could be classified as a tablet, from a hardware-centric viewpoint. But the market for non-iPad tablets is about as big today as it was before the iPad, which isn’t nothing, but it’s close enough to nothing that Apple doesn’t need to worry about it.

> http://www.marco.org/2010/12/31/there-really-isnt-much-of-a-...

[badman_ting]

Also relevant: the dates of those posts.

[Touche]

Those posts were making statements about the future, and both were unequivocally wrong.

[mamcx]

that the tablet market doesn’t today* look anything like the smartphone market ever did.

That was correct back then. Also the smartphone market is defined by several competing platforms, form-factors, tech and capabilities.

The tablet market is defined by the iPad, and the android trying to be the iPad.

[ZeroGravitas]

That claim was only correct in the US, and while Gruber thinks the US system has unfairly aided Android, it's fairly clear the opposite is true.

[mamcx]

Back them truckloads of tablets worldwide was shipped. But all of them were market failures. Only iPad have traction + mindshare.

BTW: "it's fairly clear the opposite is true." The opposite of what?

[ZeroGravitas]

No, they were market failures in the US, they've been doing well in Asia especially (as have big Android phones), see my link elsewhere in this thread. This is not particularly unusual, e.g. Xbox vs Playstation sales mix varies by region. And South Korea, Japan and China are now important markets for Android games companies.

The "opposite is true" means that it's fairly clear now that the US subsidization model hides the cost differences between phones, and puts an effective floor on prices for handsets, which favors iPhones because they are designed around the American price system.

This effect is much less strong or non-existant elsewhere on the planet and Android benefits from the ability to compete fairly on price. Android tablets have followed the same pattern that Android phones followed in these less distorted markets, though slightly faster since Android phones have already created a beachhead.