Tablet sales

A recent article on ZDnet.com blamed recent lackluster sales of iPads on... earlier iPads. This seems wrong.

The author posed this premise: Apple's iOS 9 runs on just about every iPad (it won't run on the very first iPad model, but it runs on the others) and therefore iPad owners have little incentive to upgrade. iPad owners behave differently from iPhone owners, in that they (the iPad owners) hold on to their tablets longer than people hang on to their phones.

The latter part of that premise may be true. I suspect that tablet owners do upgrade less frequently that phone owners (for Apple or Android camps). While tablets are typically less expensive than phones, iPads are pricey, and iPad owners may wish to delay an expensive purchase. My belief is that people replace phones more readily than tablets because of the relative size of phones and tablets. Tablets, being larger, are viewed as more valuable. The psychology drives us to replace phones faster than tablets. But that's a pet theory.

Getting back to the ZDnet article: There is a hidden assumption in the author's argument. He assumes that the only people buying iPads are previous iPad owners. In other words, everyone who is going to buy an iPad has already purchased one, and the only sames for iPads will be upgrades as a customer replaces an iPad with an iPad. (Okay, perhaps not "only". Perhaps "majority". Perhaps it's "most people buying iPads are iPad owners.)

This is a problem for Apple. It means that they have, rather quickly, reached market saturation. It also means that they are not converting people from Android tablets to Apple tablets.

I don't know the numbers for iPad sales and new sales versus upgrades. I don't know the corresponding numbers for Android tablets either.

But if the author's assumption is correct, and the tablet market has become saturated, it could make things difficult for Apple, Google (Alphabet?), and ... Microsoft. Microsoft is trying to get into the tablet market (in hardware and in software alone). A saturated market would mean little interest in Windows tablets.

Or maybe it means that Microsoft will be forced to offer something new, some service that compels one to look seriously at a Windows tablet.