Why People Aren't Buying iPads Anymore

[dakini]

I'm one of those folks that has a cheap 8" android tablet from a company I'd never heard of before I bought it ... mine was $85. Case added another $6 to the price. I've had it a year, and not seeing the need to replace it. I initially bought it because I needed something I could do Wordpress updates for research on the road, and couldn't easily bring my laptop, nor did I want to try typing stuff up from my phone.

Research on cheap android tablets takes a while, I admit, so you have to have time to look into who's got what, and know how you'd use the tablet, and what features are important, and which you can sacrifice on. Mine, I knew I was sacrificing on speed. But I don't play shoot-em-up games, so I don't need the speed someone who plays fancy games does. I knew screen resolution was important, as well as expandability, so I found one that went toe-to-toe with the iPad mini's screen resolution, and which had a micro SD slot. Oh, and the sound sucks on my tablet unless you use headphones. I think it took me a month to discover that.

Do my friends tease me? Yes. Just like they tease me that there's no swirl on my trainers. Oh well. I bought the tablet to do things, and it does them.

I used to be a loyal Apple fan, and still like their products, but I bought two lemons in a row from them -- my last MacBook Air was in the shop more than with me, and only lasted a month past AppleCare. Apple makes buying easy, by giving you a system guaranteed to do whatever you want. I frankly don't need something that high end. I know what I do with my tablet, and I need one that does that, and which meets the specs I need.

I suspect one of the reasons people aren't replacing tablets as fast as other devices is that tablets are our second devices. We use them for reading the newspaper larger than on our phones, or reading books and watching movies, playing games. But those are things we don't need constant upgrades to do, for the most part.

Oh, and when I emailed the company about getting a second power cord, to have a spare at the office: I got a personal email back an hour later, telling me it was $10 over Paypal. Nice.

[pidgeon92]

My husband has had a 1, 2, 4 and now the current iPad Air. I had a 1 and a 3, and now have his 4. The two 1s and the 2 & 3 have been passed down to relatives.

We upgrade my husband's regularly as he uses it for work, and he travels extensively, and he is using the thing for several hours almost every day. I had replaced my 1 with a 3 a few years back because of the retina display. When I bought him the newest one last Christmas, I took his 4 and gave the 3 to my mother-in-law.

I suspect we won't upgrade my husband's current unit until the next next upgrade, unless they come up with something really interesting in the next iteration.

[wizwor]

Apple has lost market share since Amazon, Google, and others have entered the fray. There is no doubt that potential customers have purchased a less expensive alternative. Some are settling on a big phone -- that's why Apple is increasing screen size. The need to upgrade may be a little diminished as improvements have become incremental improvements and finally changes. The economy is not good. There is less disposable income. People may be delaying purchases. The iPad demographic skews older, so some former customers are...no longer in the market.

There's a lot going on.

[piper28]

I think there's definitely a lot of the element of "I've got a perfectly good ipad now, why should I upgrade" to the declining sales. Part of that comes from quite frankly, Apple's lack of real innovation in the the category. Outside of the retina screen, there's really not a huge reason to upgrade from an older ipad to a newer one. There's a lot of cost involved, and not really a huge difference in what you get. Ok, yeah, it's faster, and the batter may last longer. And the camera may be better (although part of me really want to slap all those people I see using an ipad as a camera). Is any of that *really* worth the cost of upgrading to a new ipad? I think for a lot of people, the ipad they have is good enough, it's plentifully fast, and in general the battery lasts well.

Then there's definitely a significant portion of the market that feels that an android tablet is at least as good if not better of a choice. And quite frankly, I'm not overly convinced that the ipad mini is *that* much better quality of product over something like a nexus 7, which to me seems to be a perfectly good quality device. For those that haven't locked themselves into the iApple world, there's not necessarily a compelling reason to go with a much more expensive ipad over something like a nexus. I know I for one don't really feel there's a $200 difference in quality between the devices.

When the ipad originally debuted, it and the iphone were really truly innovative devices. Nobody else really have something that was as good, or even close to as good. Nowadays, all you have to do is watch the Samsung commercials mocking the iphone to realize that Apple doesn't have the edge that it used to (whether you agree with the things they mock apple about or not, the fact that there's stuff there to make these commercials is something that wouldn't have been true a number of years ago).

FWIW, I have an ipad2, a Nexus 2013, and a galaxy s4. I use all the devices, but I honestly am not hugely enamored with the ipad as a device. (I also didn't pay for it, it was provided through work to assist for work related tasks. But to be honest, I'd have a tough time even spending work's money on upgrading it, because it's still perfectly reasonable for what it does, and a newer one isn't going to make for a much better product for the types of things I use it for, so as long as it works, I stay with that one.)

[Yapyap]

A longer-lasting battery is really the only thing I miss - my iPad 3 (which, I gather, is known to be the worst battery-wise) needs charging after half a day as I play some casual games throughout the day, on and off. Definitely not for eight to ten hours total, though ... I'd say I get maybe 3-4 hours of actual use out of one 100% charge.

Still, as I largely use it at home, and would have a charging cord with me when travelling (and I've only really used it at the hotel when travelling, since it's a WiFi-only model), it's not a big deal.

I admit I occasionally get tempted by the retina Mini. I don't need it, and I think that when I'm forced to read PDFs, the regular size iPad's retina screen is probably handier anyway, but I'm still tempted (outside of phones, I have gadgetitis, what can I say?). But then I look at the price tag of ~500 € for the WiFi-only 32 GB model and ... that keeps me in check.

[church mouse]

Personally, I think both reasons are likely.

Apple products are generally very well made and many may see little value in upgrading whilst there is life in the old product.

However, although I am a Macbook Pro and Mac Mini user for my home computing, my mobile devices (phone and tablet) are android. 2 reasons for that:
1) they are both significantly cheaper than the Apple equivalent product, yet give me everything I need. I would have been perfectly happy to buy an Apple if I had seen any good reason.
2) I actually prefer android to IOS.

My subjective two pennies worth.

[HarryT]

When one considers that the 32GB iPad Retina Mini costs £399 in the UK, while the almost identically-speced 32GB Google Nexus 7 is half the price, at £199, it is difficult to justify the cost of the iPad.

However, if you want a machine with more storage, you're out of luck with the Nexus, while with the iPad you have options for 64GB or 128GB.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

When one considers that the 32GB iPad Retina Mini costs £399 in the UK, while the almost identically-speced 32GB Google Nexus 7 is half the price, at £199, it is difficult to justify the cost of the iPad.

However, if you want a machine with more storage, you're out of luck with the Nexus, while with the iPad you have options for 64GB or 128GB.

My two primary tablets are an 128GB iPad mini and 128GB iPad air. I started off with an iPad 1 and bought an Amazon fire when it first came out. Those two form factors work for me, I used the fire for reading at lunch and the iPad 1 for reading normally. I upgraded to the iPad 2 when the retina display came out (big, big difference), then got an iPad mini when they came out since the apps selection for the fire for the apps that I wanted was pretty bad and most of those apps lacked a professional polish. I upgraded to the two that I have now this last spring, mostly for the extra memory for media (internet can be a bit spotty at times).

[drofgnal]

I think there is a truth out there somewhere between reason 1 and 2. Surely the android tablets have gained market access. But I've never had an apple product that didn't last for years, and I had one of the first 9" black and white screen apples that came out. I still have and use my iPad 1. I'm responding to this with my 2008 iMac. I see no reason to upgrade it either. In fact my sister in law still uses my power pc based CRT based iMac running 10.4 I believe. I did recently add an ipad mini to the mix for portability.

[shanghaichica]

I think people are just satisfied with the iPad they have. I have an iPad Air which I bought this year and I don't intend to upgrade it anytime soon. I've got a three year warranty on it so want to make use of that. We also have an original iPad mini which we've had since it's launch. The OH mainly uses it now since I've had the air. The original mini is still good enough though, it does what I need it to do so I don't see the point in upgrading.

I've never used a high end android tablet, only used a galaxy tab, a nexus 7 first gen and an asus memo pad. All had flaws which caused me to quickly get rid of them, however I'm sure the high end ones would meet my needs.

[rdfry]

The Samsung Pro and Note line of tablets just offer more for less money and don't support Apples 43% profit margin.

[danskmacabre]

I bought a cheap Android tablet a few years ago and it did it's job well (email, reading PDFs )
It's starting to die now as the battery life is not to good, it's single core and not a lot of RAM so it struggles with media rich PDFs etc.

I'm in the market for a new tablet and will probably get a nice 9'7 or 10'1 tablet with multi core CPU and a decent about of RAM.
I'm torn between a decent Android tablet or a Surface 2.
I'm not interested in an Ipad though. I hate the Itunes software and the whole lock in thing.

I'll probably end up getting a decent Android tablet in the end as it's the most open OS, which is very important to me.
also as all the phones in my family are android phones, it'll be less compatibility issues amongst devices.

[Sydney's Mom]

I have had every version of the Fire, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (which still works), and saw no reason to get an ipad. But then I found out there were a couple of apps I wanted (such as the one that tracked the flu) that were not available in Google Play. Now, I read all magazines on my ipad. But I can't see ever updating, because it cost more than my fire and my Samsung combined.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I have had every version of the Fire, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (which still works), and saw no reason to get an ipad. But then I found out there were a couple of apps I wanted (such as the one that tracked the flu) that were not available in Google Play. Now, I read all magazines on my ipad. But I can't see ever updating, because it cost more than my fire and my Samsung combined.

This is exactly why I didn't get on with the 7 inch android tablet I had. Some apps that I use on my iPhone and large ipad just don't exist on Android and there aren't any other suitable apps, plus I disliked how the emails were displayed, all the addresses (I have multiple) merged. Just generally the iPads work smoother and more seamlessly. I'll never be without one, I just won't upgrade every year.

I 'may' consider a android phone as that is less important but for a tablet only an ipad will do.

[shanghaichica]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

This is exactly why I didn't get on with the 7 inch android tablet I had. Some apps that I use on my iPhone and large ipad just don't exist on Android and there aren't any other suitable apps, plus I disliked how the emails were displayed, all the addresses (I have multiple) merged. Just generally the iPads work smoother and more seamlessly. I'll never be without one, I just won't upgrade every year.

I 'may' consider a android phone as that is less important but for a tablet only an ipad will do.

I like android phones. I've been using one for the past 2 years now and don't think I could go back to an iphone (didn't get on with the 5S earlier this year) but the ipad is king when it comes to tablets.