I actually enjoy gruber's posts most of the time, but this article is incredibly stupid, for exactly the reasons he posts about. If you include the iPad numbers, the numbers for all other tablets become meaninglessly small. So if you want to write an article about the number two tablets, the only way to do it is to exclude the ipad. The article isn't about how successful the iPad is, no matter how desperately John wants to be reminded of that.
As John points out, this analysis also excludes the Nook.
if you want to write an article about the number two tablets, the only way to do it is to exclude the ipad.
Not at all. You can show, and write, exactly what you just said one sentence earlier: "The iPad has 90% market share, and the other companies split the remaining 10%, with five companies each taking 1 to 2 percent of the market."
What about that is so difficult for mortals to understand?
Even if you never mention Apple more than once, it's important, when (e.g.) pointing to the fact that HP has almost twice the share of unit sales as Motorola, to recognize that you're comparing a 2% share with a 1% share, not a 20% share with a 10% share. There's a big difference between 1% and 10%, both qualitative and quantitative. For example: Smaller numbers are closer to the noise level, and therefore more subject to fluctuation. 1% could really be 2%, and could easily jump to 2% in the next quarter, but it's unlikely that 10% is really 20%. And, lo and behold, this turns out to be relevant to this very case, because in fact HP's numbers have probably been goosed by a one-time money-losing giveaway of Touchpads. That's a fluctuation.
The analysis excludes the nook because it is an e reader, not a tablet. And yes, that matters. We talk about tablets because they are a platform for third party stuff to run on, nook is not a platform for anybody but B&N.
Do you understand the audience for these NPD reports? NPD releases their research to paying (usually corporate) customers. The press release is a small portion of what's actually in the reports.
Furthermore, don't you think a financial analyst would already know Apple's numbers? The target audience is not some Kid Biz article. Just saying.
"but this[gruber's] article is incredibly stupid, for exactly the reasons he posts about"
Gruber's article is a counterpoint on "PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space", and the idea that NPD were incorrectly attributing the "number 2" player to HP. Naturally the iPad comes into discussion (and yes it's smart to remove the iPad when trying to look at the rest of the market.) However NPD were publishing conclusions that aren't reasonable in light of the fact that the Kindle Fire and B&N Nook are selling very well in addition to the dominance of the iPad. By some reputable estimates the Nook is selling well in excess of HP. (To the tone of 15x the sales of HP.)
This article reminds me of what I like to call the 'Ernie loves Skittles' story.
My childhood friend Ernie loved Skittles. He ate them at lunch every day.
But he would get so angry if someone at our lunch table ate any other type of candy. He'd say things like, "Starburst candy is stupid. Skittles are better." Or, "Why are you eating Smarties? Are you stupid?"
Eventually we just had to say, "Ernie. Relax. Skittles are great but there are other candies, too."
Seems a bit like a Yankees fan complaining bitterly about the press covering the National League too. It's not like there is any shortage of coverage about who is number one in tablets. There is obviously real competition for the #2-#5 slots (witness all the blood in the water) so why does it matter if an analyst report focuses on that?
> ...why does it matter if an analyst report focuses on that?
If you finish the piece, it matters because the resulting conclusions come from some sort of bizarro world. Right now the tablet game really comes down to Apple, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. (The Nook, which has sold literally orders of magnitude more units than the TouchPad, isn't even being counted.)
But the report wants to reassure PC manufacturers that, somehow, that they are still in the hunt.
From TFA:
"Including the iPad makes statements like this, from NPD, seem absurd:
PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space, as four of the top five tablet brands already have a strong U.S. consumer PC presence. Only two of the top five brands play in the smartphone market.
NPD is trying to paint a picture that there’s a contest going on where there is none. I repeat the following from their report:
76 percent of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet didn’t even consider the iPad, an indication that a large group of consumers are looking for alternatives, and an opportunity for the rest of the market to grow their business.
That’s one way to put it. Another way is that 92 percent of U.S. tablet buyers considered an iPad, and 89 percent bought an iPad, which means 97 percent of tablet buyers who merely considered an iPad bought an iPad, and if not for the 8 percent of tablet buyers who for whatever reason did not consider an iPad, none of these companies would have sold even 100,000 tablets over the first nine months of 2011."
OK? So? 8% of the market is "a large group of consumers". Most of top tablet makers are PC manufacturers. The original piece was entitled "U.S. Tablet Sales (excluding Apple) Exceed 1.2 Million Units in First 10 Months of 2011", and the article is about that. Gruber's piece is basically saying "I know this isn't about the iPad, but why aren't you talking about the iPad?" The original piece acknowledges the elephant in the room, says for the purposes of this article they will ignore the elephant in the room, and then analyzes the data as they say they would. What is wrong with that?
If PC manufacturers take this report as an indication that they are safely in the hunt in the tablet space, then they would be complete and utter idiots. But there is still information to be gathered other than "Apple won, give up".
> But there is still information to be gathered other than "Apple won, give up".
There most certainly is more information.
Namely, how it was that Apple won and how it is that another company could maybe come close to trying. That would be a more useful analysis than "Hey, so, this guy has half a percent more of the market than this guy, but let's pretend that the iPad doesn't exist and say it's actually more like 6%." Pretending that fighting over the table scraps is a viable business is hardly impressive, here.
And then you get little chunks of just straight bullshit, like this. "PC manufacturers are dominant in the tablet space."
No, they aren't. They're selling handfuls of units. The dominant players in tablet land aren't commodity PC manufacturers.
This is about as useful as saying I'm dominant in my run for the presidency when you only count polling from my friends, family and coworkers.
NPD doesn't get off the hook for writing something absurd just because their title matches their thesis and they turned it to their homeroom teacher on time.
Everyone is really misinterpreting that PC manufacturers are dominant line. They are saying that in the market besides the iPad, HP/Samsung/Acer/Asus are doing surprisingly well compared to HTC/Motorola/Nokia/Blackberry considering these devices usually run what were originally mobile phone OSs. But because everyone is up in arms about the fact the iPad wasn't considered, they miss that point and assume it is saying something (that PC makers are actually dominant) that it clearly isn't.
It's strange -- when misreporting mischaracterizes an underdog, I feel sympathy towards that underdog. But when someone calls out reporting like this, I find it more offensive than informative.
In theory perhaps I should treat them the same, but the best analogy I can come up for this piece reads is something dramatic and ugly like "this article claims economic conditions in South America are improving, but check out how poor they are compared to the US!"
Your argument would almost be a good one if NPD had not used quotes such as:
“According to NPD’s Consumer Tracking Service, 76 percent of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet didn’t even consider the iPad, an indication that a large group of consumers are looking for alternatives, and an opportunity for the rest of the market to grow their business.”
If you overlay this argument on your South American analogy it would read something like:
Economic conditions in South America are improving, an indication that poverty has declined.
If you think about it, this does not make sense. Improvements in economic conditions may have no effect on poverty at all if the money is not trickling down.
NPD was probably targeting this report at some PC manufacturer that was looking to invest in the tablet sector. It is probably 'market research' reporting such as this that creates bubbles such as Groupon.
I saw your response late, sorry for missing it. That quote is a good one. I agree "76% of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet" is constructed to sound like a big number but is really a small one. Not sure why your comment shows up grayed out.
Presumably, the companies paying big dollars to NDP to buy their market research data. I'm sure that includes those other 5 companies the report is about.
Amazingly for once, I agree with Gruber about the report being weird - but not with his reasoning.
What I don't understand is why look at a time window a significant portion of for which the primary OS under consideration (Android) didn't even exist on tablets. The Android tablet ecosystem effectively only came to market in a meaningful way in April(and even then it took several months more to release world-wide). Why would someone make a report in which half the considered time period is more or less irrelevant?
I wish he had more to back up his 10m US iPad sales than "a conservative guess." 40% of all iPad sales being in the US seems a bit much.
Maybe he could extrapolate from the other manufacturers' worldwide sales? So if Samsung sold 192,000 tablets in the US and 500,000 worldwide, his 40% figure might make sense.
I think 40% makes sense. Remember that for Apple, the US is a market above all others. For a lot of other players, the US is, at best, just one of many first-class citizens.
Apple is a US company, Samsung/HTC/Nokia/RIM/BLAH aren't. They market very well to US consumers, both their products and their brand. Also, Apple products tend to go on sale in the US first. Even if you cut it by half, the numbers are still embarrassing for everyone else.
It's reasonable to assert that about 40% of the sales came from domestic sales.
Historically Apples international revenue has floated around 40% (i.e domestic at around 60% by revenue). In recent quarters these figures have reversed due to international iPhone penetration. (By revenue iPhone makes up around 43% of Apple's business with the iPad and Mac hardware roughly on par at 19%/20% respectively. iPhone significantly outsells all other business models by units and revenue.)
Apple's last quarterly results(Q4 2011) indicated 63% international revenue over all business units. Leaving 37% for domestic revenue.
Applying this figure directly indicates 4.11M sales alone in the last quarter, or 9.25M over the three quarters stated, which is reasonably consistent with Gruber's math.
If we keep in mind that the iPhone is skewing the revenue split to international purchases we can assert that 40% is indeed being conservative.
One manufacturer you can make that estimate for is ASUS.
NPD claims that they sold ~120k tablets in the US through October. At around the same time (right around the Transformer Prime launch, I believe), ASUS claims they have sold 1.2 million total.
Given those two data points, you'd estimate that ASUS is selling 90% of their tablets outside the US. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that ASUS is strong in Asia and that was what was driving their non-US sales.
Now that Apple is getting it's clock cleaned in the smartphone market, time to focus on how awesome the iPad is. Wait a couple years, iPad will be 15% of the table market, then Grubertool will have to find something else to focus on.
Did Gruber made your Android phone cry? lets keep the "tool" part out, please. Completely unnecessary.
Gruber's point is obviously biased towards Apple but it doesn't lack truth or facts. NPD report is sketchy at best and gives a distorted view of the current scene, which is the opposite of what this kind of reports should do.
As for the marketshare it's interesting because so far what we are seeing is that the iPad is not behaving like the iPhone but more like the iPod. It makes sense, after all. The phone market its heavily subsidized and people choose phones based on carrier availability and special deals. A lot of the growth of Android can be attributed to 2x1 deals, middle range phones that are not used as smartphones and the lack of iPhone on Verizon and Sprint until recently. Im not saying that Android isn't a great OS or that Android phones can't be awesome and cutting edge -lots of them are-, just that when you analyze the Android growth you cannot discount these things.
His point has an analogue in traditional book publishing. Historically they would decide (at least, in the US, up to say the 90's) what was a "bestseller" only after first excluding any book or genre they did not approve of, like romance, westerns, military adventure, the Bible, etc. Which just happened to have very high and consistent sales. In other words, the actual bestsellers were first excluded, then among the remaining they decided which of those also-rans were the least also-ranny, and called them the bestsellers.
this blog simply blogs about one thing which is praising iOS, this has been going on for I have no idea how many months or years. every post on this blog, gets to HN within about few minutes/seconds from its publishing time.
the message is not to daring fireball owner but to the HN community, please, stop copy-pasting every single post just to get karma or whatever other reasons.
