Originally Posted by Matt D:
“The tablet market is not the same as the smartphone market. It seems more like the MP3 player market.
Most people buy smartphones on a contract, heavily subsidised. As such, high-end Android phones are cheaper than the iPhone.
The tablet market is not the same. Most people just buy the tablet, they do not get it subsidised with a contract. As such, the high-end competition all tend to cost around the same price as the iPad (apart from the ones which failed miserably, and then had repeated price cuts to try and get people to buy them, such as the Xoom and PlayBook).
It's not just that which is different.
Apple's starting point in the market is far different from the smartphone market.
Apple never dominated the smartphone market the way it continues to dominate the tablet market. It was a late comer to the smartphone market, going up against existing manufacturers such as Nokia and RIM, and existing OSes such as Symbian and WM5.
The current tablet market, however, was effectively created by Apple. It has dominated it since the beginning, and although its share has decreased, that is only because of the increase in size of the market itself. It still utterly dominates it, and still sells more tablets than all the competition, with sales continuing to increase every single quarter.
Apple does not need to catch up with anyone else. They all need to catch up with Apple.”
That is one slant on it, not one I agree with. I see some of what you say makes sense. However I think that will just increase the time it takes for android to pass ios. Unless one of us can see into the future...we dont know for sure.