The iPad Is Unbeatable ⇥

Farhad Manjoo, for Slate:

It’s the iPod model. In this story, Apple begins by releasing a novel, category-defining product. Then, as rivals scramble for some way to respond, Apple relentlessly puts out slightly better versions every year, each time remaining just out of reach of the competition. Meanwhile it lowers its prices and expands its product lineup, making its devices more accessible to a wider audience.

As long as Apple keeps anticipating where the market will go, they’ll keep rising above their competitors ^[1]. Take a look at the netbook fad: analysts were relentlessly pushing Apple to make a cheap laptop. These analysts saw a potentially huge netbook market because Dell and Asus were selling lots of them. As Jason Snell put it:

Apple sold 2.3M laptops at an average price of $1,265 per unit. Imagine how much money it could have lost if it had a netbook!

This was posted on October 19, 2009; three months before the iPad was announced. Apple sold over 15 million iPads in their most recent quarter.

1. This didn’t happen with the smartphone market, but that’s likely due to the sheer quantity of smartphones available for less than the iPhone in developing nations. There are very few competitors for the iPhone 4 and 4S in terms of hardware quality, and certainly no competitors in terms of its industrial design. It’s a premium product, something which there are fewer sales of in the Android sphere.