Analysts take on Apple’s iPad

While iSuppli Corp. believes that the iPad delivered on its promises and is likely to be a sales success for Apple, the jury is still out as to whether the tablet will redefine the technology market. However, Strategy Analytics and In-Stat analysts expect the iPad to re-ignite the tablet market.

Peter King, director of the Connected Home Devices service at Strategy Analytics, says purchasers who were considering one of these devices will now reevaluate their decisions with the emergence of the iPad, which can perform many of the functions of other products, while providing Apple’s renowned usability and multimedia entertainment.

While King expects the iPad to revitalize the tablet market, helping to boost sales to more than $11 billion by 2014, he also anticipates that the iPad will cannibalize existing mobile products including netbooks, smartbooks, e-book readers and mobile internet devices (MIDs).

But will the iPad kill the e-reader market? In-Stat cautions individuals who are quick to write off the e-reader segment just because the iPad is an impressive device. The market, which includes e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and the Sony E-Reader Daily Edition, has firmly established itself in the U.S market, and still has plenty of room for growth that new features such as e-mail and Web connectivity will drive, says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst.

Ethier doesn’t expect the iPad to kill Kindle sales in the short term. Instead, she suspects that the immediate impact is that the iPad will ignite the tablet market. She predicts the blur between tablets and e-readers will start within the year, and will impact the outlook for future Kindle and all e-reader sales.

Dale Ford, senior vice president at iSuppli, says the iPad delivered on all its promises in terms of features, design, software, content and even price at $499, but it will take several quarters after shipments begin to see if it has a revolutionary impact on the tech world.

Though the iPad is considered a tablet PC it has an extremely light weight; uses the iPhone operating system and focuses on content presentation, making it a fit somewhere between a smart phone, e-reader and netbook PC, says iSuppli.

Dr. Jagdish Rebello, senior director and principal analyst at iSuppli says the key question for Apple is what’s the usage case for this product: “What does it do that other products don’t do — and what does it have that will make a large number of consumers want to buy the product?”

iSuppli believes the killer app for the iPad appears to be delivery and presentation of content due to its portability, built-in iPod, display, touch interface, wireless connectivity and powerful processor, which delivers convenient viewing of all types of content — photos, videos, music, games, e-books, and online newspapers.

Egil Juliussen, principal analyst and fellow at iSuppli says the iPad will become a game changer if it changes the print information business to an electronic information market.

Display technology was a key concern to Apple when it choose the 9.7-inch 1024 × 768 LED-backlit, In-Plane Switching (IPS) TFT-LCD display for the iPad, says DisplaySearch.

DisplaySearch analysts say with a wide 178-degree viewing angle, “you can hold it almost any way you want, and still get a brilliant picture, with excellent color and contrast.”

What’s unique about the display is that it is not a wide aspect ratio like about 99 percent of notebook PCs, says DisplaySearch. The market researchers believe Apple was trying to find a middle ground between requirements for books, magazines and newspapers and the requirements for video and gaming.

Tags: Apple, Apple IPad, Dale Ford, DisplaySearch, E-Readers, Egil Juliussen, Electronics Advocate, In-Stat, IPad, ISuppli, Jagdish Rebello, Market Analysts, MIDs, Networks, Notebooks, Peter King, Smart Books, Stephanie Ethier, Tablet PCs

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Business, Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.