Is the iPad Suffering from Shrinkage?
Posted on: 05/19/2014, by : DCT Solutions GroupiPad sales are shrinking and that is big news in the world of tech pundits.
If you want more of the dirty details you can find it here, here or here if you like your news with an Apple-Centric spin. I particularly like the Apple-Centric article because it explains all of the opportunities Apple missed because they were too busy racing with Google to become the most valuable technology company in the world.
In our world the volume of iPad sales are staggering. We measure our largest customers in the hundreds and low thousands of devices. Motorola (soon to be Zebra) and Intermec (by Honeywell) measure their largest installs in the low tens of thousands. In Q2 Apple sold almost 16 ½ million iPads and sales are declining!
Still, the decline is worth noting. I purchased my first iPad within weeks of its release. I was immediately struck by the quality of its design and engineering and the truly unique user experience it provided. If only I could figure out what to do with it.
The same was true of many of our customers. They wanted to use it, but couldn’t quite figure out where it fit in the industrial and field mobility environment. Several found success, primarily in the route accounting and merchandising verticals that had a mixed install base traditional rugged handhelds and laptops. We also have seen industrial customers replace fork truck or cart mounted devices successfully with iPads. However, over the past few years we are seeing fewer and fewer customers try to make the iPad the single platform for mobile applications.
Why? I think there are a couple of reasons. Number one, the traditional rugged computing guys are finally delivering products at a price point and feature set that justify the increased initial investment cost. Also, software tools like Motorola’s Rho Elements, Xamarin and Kony are delivering robust tools and environments enabling DCT Mobile and similar companies to create Enterprise class HTML 5 applications that are finally fulfilling the promise of write once run many.
