The ipad's life and death is not the iphone's decision.

The ipad's sales are not rosy since the iphone 6 Plus, the "tablet phone," which has been on the decline for the first time in the quarter, with media reports that the ipad's market is being eroded by the iphone 6 and that its position in the Apple product line is being "marginalized" There are a lot of media people are worried about the future development of the ipad, a Time "iphone kill ipad," the decline of words, really gave Apple a lot of pressure.

Just in the past "Black Friday" day, the ipad in the San Francisco Bay Area unexpectedly hot selling, a number of retail stores and physical stores almost out of stock, single "Black Five" sales, the ipad and even tablet computer future fate may not be so miserable.

From the competitive perspective of internal products, IPhone, ipad as Apple's two of the student, the competition between the trend is inevitable, once up to the strategic level of brand development, simple from the two products between the two long directly launched the "cannibalism", or "Who Killed who" the argument, Obviously it is exaggerated and untenable.

In refuting the "iphone kill ipad" proposition, the author's view is that the ipad's Apple product line has not been marginalized, the tablet market hegemony has never been really shaken.

The first thing to understand is that Apple has never been a conquering also will not use product diversification to meet all segments of the market, it can not be like Nokia, the creation of n types, attributes, functions of different mobile phones, as far as possible to cover all the people, for the annual capacity is still facing problems of Apple, not too realistic and unnecessary. Apple's product positioning is very clear, is to meet the electronic product heavy users of all needs.

The ipad, which was born four years ago, is doomed to be different from the iphone's fate. Therefore, in the product design, the ipad's software and hardware configuration, nor the iphone can be compared, mainly reflected in the following areas:

Hardware advantages: Compared to the two products listed in the same period, the ipad is found to take more hardware than the iphone, as the ipad 2 uses a dual-core A5 processor, which is much stronger than the iphone 4 A4 processor, plus a large screen customization, enhanced built-in graphics, large game programs, etc. are based on the quality of the ipad's entertainment, and within the iphone, the same functional hardware is compromised.

Software Advantage: iphone software can basically be used on the ipad, but the ipad software may not be installed in the iphone, Apple in order to allow the ipad to play a hardware advantage, in the App Store to plan the ipad area, and originally support the iphone, IPod The touch software is called the iphone area, where the ipad can support the iphone version of the software, but the iphone and ipod Touch cannot use the ipad version of the software.

There is no doubt that Apple has developed a line that distinguishes the iphone from the future of the ipad. Apple believes that the chances of a user taking the ipad online should be small. If camera, phone, Flash, multitasking can be done on the iphone, imac and PC, who will be holding the ipad to deal with complex business needs? Naturally there will be no strong market demand for the ipad.

In fact, the iphone and ipad are not very comparable, even with the iOS system, the main functional applications tend to be the same, but the intersection of the two product lines is not much. Ultimately, the ipad is an online multimedia entertainment terminal, as long as the product key features to achieve the ultimate, to give up those in the flat screen redundant, not practical functions, but also in reducing costs, shorten the time to take advantage of the market, to verify the existence of the deficiencies, but also through the upgrade version to solve. Compared to the market demand is simple, the response is also flexible ipad,iphone without this product advantage.

Cook's ipad strategy

According to IDC's forecasts, global PC shipments will continue to fall this year, with tablet handsets increasing by 118 million, while tablet shipments will grow by only 16 million units. But the iphone 6 Plus release has made it all the more variable, with 56.4 million iphone shipments in the fourth quarter and a "flat-panel phone" of 6 Plus reaching 1510 units.

But objectively speaking, we can split the 6 Plus sales by half on smartphones and two of tablets, meaning about 7.5 million of the sales of around 15 million are actually potential users of the ipad. Apple sold 26 million ipads in the fourth quarter of last year, so even though IDC has lowered its ipad sales by 3 million this year, combined with 7.5 million 6 Plus sales, the overall sales of Apple's tablet devices are still growing. So a single sale of the ipad could be a downward trend this year, but it doesn't have much impact on Apple's combined revenue.

Whether the ipad's future market outlook is still clear is not a limited drop in product line shipments, not to mention that the slide is entirely within Apple's controllable product strategy, which, as the world's most productive and most expensive tablet, can once again reach the beginning of a product launch, The ipad effect around 2010 depends on what Apple is going to do with the ipad, and find a balance between smartphones and Tablet PCs. Or two to pick a knife down on the iphone?