Toni Sacconaghi, Analyst, Sanford C. Bernstein
While Apple has been putting a great deal of effort refining the right combination of iPads to complete the product lineup, it’s no surprise they can’t sit idle to maintain dominance. At the retail front, competition is fierce, so some have telegraphed new models are coming by slashing prices by 30 percent. Here’s your chance to pick up a retina iPad for really short cash at Best Buy.
Sacconaghi’s contention is that Apple is clinging to market share through smaller tablets, implying that to continue that dominance, Apple will need to produce more low-end models. I don’t agree Apple is going to compromise or unbalance their product line just to get marketshare. I do believe Apple will upgrade all the iPads and keep the product line balanced and intact. Apple is a master at product line development, maintaining consistency across the line is more important to increasing market share than hawking cheaper models.
In a research note published on Wednesday, Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, estimated that Apple will account for 40 percent of the worldwide tablet market in its next fiscal year, down from 57 percent during its last fiscal year. Mr. Sacconaghi thinks Apple will sustain higher market share in tablets than in smartphones in part because it has been more aggressive in courting more price sensitive consumers with the iPad mini, the iPad has better global distribution than the iPhone and there are more apps optimized for the iPad than there are for competing tablets.
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