Hoping to gain on the markets with their products such as iPhone, the company is debuting its newest iPad with new features.
One of the features is the Touch ID fingerprint scanning system. Using this feature with the Apple Pay mobile pay platform will make this popular amongst users. The iPad mini may not have this feature.
Apple has to do whatever it can to get ahead as the once mighty iPad has slipped in sales. Latest figures show it dropped 8% from the previous year. At present the iPad makes only 16% of Apple’s total sales. Of hope is that a new team up collaboration with IBM thus making a variety of iPads with updates due later in October it might be the impetus to get those big sales up there again.
The tablet industry has taken a beating of late and we need to look at why. Although still popular and growing industry experts are keeping a weather eye on them. Now at 11% in sales growth that’s down from the whopping 60% from a few years ago. The iPad on the other hand fell 9% last quarter alone preceded by a 16% drop.
Experts say there are several reasons for tablets’ drop, and Apple hopefully has gotten the message and will be putting out an iPad that beats the odds.
First of all, smartphones are changing. They’re getting bigger to the point they look like tablets themselves. The Galaxy S5 from Samsung sports a 5.1 inch screen and their Galaxy Note has a 5.5 inch screen. Apple themselves are coming out of the gate with an iPhone 6 with a 5.5 inch screen themselves. In comparison those phones are almost as big as the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet that is only 1.5 inches bigger.
Tablets aren’t super expensive but why get a new one every few years? Just because the new one has some feature that is popular and is all the buzz? Even Apple’s iPad Air isn’t that much different than their original iPad of several years ago. Getting contracts for the tablets can be a royal pain to many. Add to all that a list of other tablet problems and you can see the problem.
Of good news is the team up of Apple and IBM. Announcing their partnership earlier this month hoping to boost the tablet industry, Apple will have IBM load their tablets with what is called industry specific apps for businesses in health care, banking, insurance, retail and more.