Apple celebrates soaring iPad sales: Put it on my tab, says CEO Tim Cook Apple is crediting a resurgence in its education programs and school sales in helping to drive up iPad sales to its first gains since 2014. The iGiant touted numbers that topped expectations in its fiscal year 2017 Q3 (ending July 1). They further excited analysts by projecting a monster fourth quarter to close out fiscal 2017 …
Eh, they should have learned by now the time to short Apple is right before the iPhone announcement in September. It is a very "sell on the news" time because once the new iPhone is announced the hedge fund guys realize it will be 365 days before the next iPhone comes out so they reduce their Apple holdings to get aboard the next hype train with Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, etc...
Went to an Apple Store recently and played a few games on the new iPad. I was truly amazed how nice the graphics were. But the price was over a thousand US dollars for the model I was playing with adding in accessories. How is this feasible for school children? For a fraction of that price they can get a tablet with books.
While I agree the price is bonkers, it's clearly selling well so must be filling some need that is not readily apparent and the other vendors aren't capable of satisfying.
For most people this will not be there first tablet purchase.
You must have been looking at the iPad Pro. Schools aren't buying those, they're buying the 'regular' iPad for $329. The unit sales for iPad went up more than the revenue did - a hint that the sales increase was from the $329 iPads not the much higher priced iPad Pro.
They just started shipping the updated iPad Pro in mid June, it wouldn't have had much time to be reflected in Q2 sales which are only through June 30th.
There is at least one company selling iPad schemes to schools where they supply "discounted" iPads to schools and parents can pay them off in instalments.
My wife's school went with it and regretted it. Many parents just didn't pay leaving a credit chasing nightmare. Some of them just returned them after breaking screens etc and generally it cost them a whole world of hassle.
We didn't bother going for them because they were old iPad Airs which looked like a bargain on the face of it but a little googling turned them up available cheaper anyway. We've had a chance to take one of the returned ones for next to nothing, but not bothered.
As with any tool, I tend to cynically believe a lot of these devices are just used as tablet baby sitters running Clash of Clans and their ilk for kids by parents that have little engagement with the learning process. Yes they have amazing educational opportunities with these tablets including the Swift Playgrounds app, but they do need to have some control in place to stop them becoming wasted potential.
"There is at least one company selling iPad schemes to schools where they supply "discounted" iPads to schools and parents can pay them off in instalments."
Yes, 7-8 years ago my the secondary school my sons went to almost went down this line ... except that back then their "innovative and modern" take on leaning was going to be based on Compaq Ipaq's with 4" screens!
There are always scumbags around coming up with schemes to steal from schools and parents of school aged children who worry their little one will be "left behind". Unfortunately they are mostly targeting those parents and school districts who can least afford it, because there's no reason for a well funded suburban school district and their upper middle class parents to need such a scheme to afford computers/tablets/etc.
Yer, the sarcastic spin from tech sites (including El Reg) on the iPad launches this year focused on the most amazing thing being a price drop at the time, but look who's laughing now eh? It has made the iPad and the iOS ecosystem more accessible to schools and volume purchasers. I also sometimes believed the iPad's days of strong growth were numbered, but Apple focusing on them once again has seemingly paid dividends. The new iPad pros are truly lovely with the new fast screen display tech they have, and I shall be picking one up in due course.
There are several reasons why iPad sales to schools could be up:
1) All the schools that originally bought them when they came out have realised that they've all been broken or nicked, and it's time to replace them.
2) The idiots with the budgets still haven't worked out that they're being ripped off. "No-one ever got sacked for buying Apple"
3) The idiots with the budgets want a flashy top-of-the-range iPad to show off with (cf. senior executives with 30" monitors on their desk), and the only way to justify it is to make sure everyone else in the school also has a cheap(er) iPad for 'compatibility'.
Or because they lowered the price on the standard 9.7" model and it is more affordable now than it was in the past? Sure, some will be replacements of older ones, but since the iPad is 7 years old they've already been in a replacement cycle for some time.
Whether it is a 'rip off' or not depends on how they are being used. I'm sure some school districts use them very effectively and they are well worth the money, and others not so much.
I love it how the breaking and iPad when dropped is still an argument with people. It's not a freaking orange, why can't you hold onto it? If you and/or kid are sloppy just buy one of those drop safe cases that makes the iPad look like the michelin man and you are good!
Honestly, what do people even want now days? An assistant to come with the iPad to also use it for you? :) It's just a damn tablet and there are ways to protect it or buy insurance if, again, you are that bad at holding things in your hand.
In my experience, users tend to care a lot less about the kit if they don't own it. I've seen so many damaged iPads due to carelessness. No doubt they would have been a lot more careful if it was their own kit, and cost them a significant part of their wages.
It's a shame, the organisation won't make the careless staff pay for damage caused to their kit. It's bad enough we have to waste time sorting out these issues.
But I do agree with another commentator here, prevention is indeed better than cure, so if someone coughed up a bit more cash to ensure tough cases and screen protectors were provided to save the devices from user carelessness.
Mage, m'man, given that we know that you really hate Apple, would it be asking too much if I were to request the source of your numbers? I'd just love to see how Apple could make a 70% margin on a $330 (32GB) or $430 (128 GB) item. By my math, if Apple has a 70% margin on the $330 one, then it cost them $100 to make, and it cost $130 to make the $430 one. Can you provide a source listing the various parts and their cost?
38% is pretty much what I thought the margin was. 70% was simply beyond even Apple's dreams.
I was waiting to see exactly how Mage would design, build, and ship a 9.7" tablet with the iPad's specs for $100. $200, which is what it seems to be, is cutting things tight as it is.
That 38% margin gives lots of space for Apple to cut prices and still make a profit. I wish that I could charge a 38% margin, I really do. It's not 70%. It's not even remotely close to 70%. Saying, as Mage did, that Apple has 70% margins when they aren't even close to that level does two thing: it makes the person saying that look bad, and it makes Apple look (relatively) good. Could it be that Mage is really a fanboi in deep, deep, DEEP cover?
"Why are people buying these? Is it deluded schools insisting on them?"
If we move beyond the silly slander of Mage's margin conjecture, he actually has something of a point.
The iPad has been dying for a while and the new models aren't very exciting, and even after the 'price drop' they are still markedly more expensive than an equivalent-spec 'droid. So there really does need to be some explaining for this.
The Pro is not a particularly high-end bit of kit, despite a high price, and is not going to be making in-roads in actual enterprise environments (where everyone and their mum who's allowed a tablet is given a Surface so they can use the existing legacy software). So it's not driving this turnaround.
In fact, most of the turnaround is clearly coming from the schools program, where sales have massively outperformed the general upswing. So it looks a lot like Apple is driving this tablet recovery by running a Swift training program in schools and then demanding the schools push for iPads to participate in it.
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