To: pyslent who wrote (168398 ) 4/14/2014 10:47:17 AM From: Ryan Bartholomew Read Replies (2) | Respond to Personally, I think the continued softness in iPad demand is worth discussing. I know I'm treading close to verboten territory here, but we now know that the new products did not reignite growth; here is where an honest assessment of market share could explain why. Is it due to competition or market saturation? Saturation combined with decreasing appeal of tablets as category in general, is my guess. The lack of keyboard really makes tablets consumption devices, and upgrading rapidly - especially at higher price points - just isn't justified for many. I don't know if there's anything Apple or any competitor can do to change this, other than make tablets very cheap.I think the lowest hanging fruit is the chrome book market. No one should be buying those IMO. What are people doing with them that couldn't be done better on a tablet? College students are another under served market I would think. I own a half dozen, and through business, have deployed many dozens (I'm using one right now). The keyboard is critical. It's a rare person who can input on a tablet as rapidly as they can on a laptop w/keyboard, especially for document creation/editing. Students prefer to type instead of swipe/tap if they're writing a lot. Also, Chromebooks are essentially disposable for some. Not only do they boot in seconds, but they're completely secure (everything is wiped when you shut it or log out), and are a couple hundred bucks. If you use GoGo WiFi when traveling (many business travelers in particular, do) and/or could use 100GB of free cloud storage upgrade, then the ~$200 worth of freebies that come with it make them almost free.
