IDC’s Bob O’Donnell is coming seriously close to the Enderline to my way of thinking, not so much for blatant Apple hating but for the blind spot he has where the Cupertino-company is concerned.
Computerworld has the IDC exec saying that 3G tablet sales are doomed as doomed can be. For proof, look no further than the "hundreds of thousands" of 3G tablets sitting - unsold - on the shelves of various carriers.
"The 3G thing on tablets is bogus," says O'Donnell. "Nobody wants to pay for that data," and, "Sales of 3G tablets have been very slow."
For me - actually - he’s right. My first iPad was “plus 3G” because I was worried about being caught places without WiFi. Then, after close to a year of using 3G on my iPad one time, the iPad 2 I bought is WiFi only. But that was just about the added cost of the device not the data plan, since you don’t have to sign up for a monthly data plan with the iPad, which - by the way - is far and away the most popular tablet on the planet.
Here’s my issue with O'Donnell: He doesn’t even seem to be taking the iPad into account in his accounting, basing his belief that 3G tablet sales suck wind on “interviews with several large tablet makers, including Motorola and Samsung.”
"Tablets are a different animal than smartphones and are much more like a typical computer where you tend to sit in one place using Wi-Fi to work," says O’Donnell.
Some tablet makers that make both tablets and cellphones - a la Samsung and Motorola - have focused tablet sales through wireless carriers, finding only "moderate" success says IDC.
Sales of their devices were "largely stymied by many consumers' unwillingness to sign up for the 3G/4G data plans that the carriers typically require along with those devices," also says IDC.
"We believe [tablet] vendors who continue to focus on the telco channel for distribution will face serious challenges..." also says IDC. Seriously, there’s not much wrong with what they’re saying... except for one, trifling thing: THEY SEEM TO BE IGNORING THE IPAD!
I know iPad is just one tablet, but it’s the biggest tablet.
It’s like a music analyst saying, “Sales of Juice Newton and Helen Ready tracks indicate that no one is buying music by female artists anymore.”
“Well,” says some guy with a Posterous page, “what if you add in Lady GaGa?”
“Im sorry, who?”
