so Ipad sales drop for the first time yoy for a quarter, and profits dropped as well. Should Apple decrease the prices? Should they be worried?

[Zappykins]

famousringo said:

 

Microsoft will tell you that tablets are PCs. You think they don't know what they're talking about? That they'd gamble with Windows on a whim? Tablets are PCs in that they are literally Personal Computers and in that they are displacing conventional PCs for the same use cases, plus a few more. Please tell me how many quarters of contraction the conventional PC market needs to endure before you'll accept that tablets are PCs.

Apple never had a dominant hold on the phone market or the PC market. Apple's pre-iPad best showing in PC marketshare came in 1984, when the Apple II and Mac earned a combined 21% slice of the market:

http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137

They did lose customers in PCs, but now they've gained them back with the iPad and I doubt that momentum is spent.

As for the phone market, Apple has 9% and is still growing. No lost customers here:

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2482816

 

I think it really depends on which tablet you are comparing.  The Microsoft Surface RT - it more of an consumer web browsing tablet. It runs an ARM processor and a special version of Windows 8 RT.  It's great for browsing, reading books, watching movies, some email, word processing but you wouldn't want to create much content heavier on it like you would a PC.  It is very comparable to an ipad, but can multi task and a few other things.  It's not all that expensive product at $349.

The Surface Pro is a full fledged PC running a very good Intel Core I5 CPU that is also a tablet.  It's more powerful than many laptops.  It runs a full Windows 8.  You can plug it in on a stand on your desk and used like any other PC.  (People are expecting an Intel Haswell version soon - and upgraded less power using CPU.)  It starts at $899 so a much different league.