As it stands, Apple’s iPads have the majority market share when it comes to tablets. This is thanks to Apple who safe to say made tablets popular once again a few years ago. However is it possible that Apple maintain this streak forever? Well according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, apparently not.
Accordong to Kuo in a note to investors, he revealed that come Q1 2015, Apple is expected to take a massive hit in terms of iPad sales. Kuo is forecasting that Apple will end up selling 9.8 million tablets in Q1 2015 which might sound a lot, but in reality it is a 40% drop on a year-on-year basis.
So why is this the case? Well Apple’s CEO Tim Cook had once said that customers tend to hold onto tablets longer than phones. “People hold onto iPads longer than they do a phone. We’ve only been in this business four years. We don’t know what the upgrade cycle will be.” In a way that is true. While people see the need to upgrade phones on an annual basis, especially consider we use them day in and out, the same does not apply to tablets which might be used less frequently.
For example tablets might only be used on holidays or for special purposes, such as reading comics, magazines, or ebooks, while our phones are used for everyday tasks, like making phone calls, messaging, sending emails, and etc. It is not expected that this drop in iPad sales will impact Apple too much, not in the short term at least as Apple always has their iPhones to fall back on.
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