As device sales around the world slows down, device manufacturers are facing intense competition. According to a recent report by Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on devices is expected to grow a mere 2 percent in 2017, representing price increases more than sales growth.
Global tablet shipments came down sharply in 2015 and 2016, but are expected to recover slightly over the next few years.
Apple iPad sales have been on a downward trend and the possibility of recovery does look a bit bleak due to tightening conditions in the market. And, as if the market slowdown wasn’t enough, CNBC reported:
“J.D. Power released its 2017 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Study on Thursday and noted that customers are more satisfied with Microsoft’s Surface tablets than they are with Apple’s iPad and tablets built by Samsung, LG, Amazon, Acer and Asus.”
“Microsoft topped J.D. Power’s consumer survey in three key areas including internet connectivity, availability of official accessories and the variety of pre-installed applications. Microsoft also beat the iPad when it boiled down to consumer preference for tablet attractiveness, quality of materials and size of the tablet.”
You can read our coverage of the JD Power survey, and how Surface Pro 5 is potentially a destructive force against Apple’s iPad Pro push this year.
JD Power Study Shows Exactly How Surface Pro 5 Could Crush Apple iPad Pro 2017
One of the biggest advantages that Surface has is that it is a desktop OS-based device, soon to come with Windows 10 Creators Update out of the box. That’s not something iOS can compete with. In addition, Microsoft intends it to be a hybrid, something that Apple has long been averse to.
The question now is this: despite the market’s demand for hybrid tablets and JD Power’s clear revelation of consumer preferences, will Apple continue to stand resolute against all this PR onslaught?
Surface Pro 5 is expected to be exemplary of the versatility of a hybrid tablet, and with Windows 10 Creators Update it will be even more appealing to creative professionals and gamers alike. Features like 3D, Mixed Reality support, 4K UHD, game streaming via Beam and so on will put it far ahead of the field, and that’s what Apple needs to compete with.
The argument that Apple’s iPad is a pure-play tablet doesn’t hold water any more. It is quickly becoming a brand-value-only product in a segment that’s rapidly dwindling. Hybrids aren’t going to replace laptops any time soon, but the choice of converting them into laptops whenever you need them to is too irresistible for the average consumer to shrug off as a “fad”, and that’s really Apple’s biggest problem right now: a growing fad that’s no longer a fad anymore.
And it’s called Surface Pro 5.
Source: CNBC
Source: JD Power
