The new iPad does not reflect the innovative strategic blind spot

Apple Inc. listed a new model of the tablet terminal "iPad." At the same time, it also lowered the price of the original model in order to fight against the US Amazon that eroded its market share. However, the new iPad does not reflect the "innovation" that once shaped Apple into a featured company.

"No one company's personal computer sales exceeded the iPad in October-December 2011." On March 7th, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., said at a new product launch for the tablet device "iPad".

As Apple CEO Tim Cook said, Apple sold 15.4 million iPads in October-December 2011 alone. This shipment not only dominates the market for tablet PCs, but also exceeds the total of all PCs supplied by HP, the world's largest PC maker, from October to December 2011.

Apple will be committed to the new iPad as the main force, with a variety of digital products to open up the late former chairman Steve Jobs described the "post-PC (detached from the personal computer)" era.

To cut the price of the original model in order to defeat the competitors The flat-panel terminal market did not exist until the first generation of iPad was released, but the current market scale is rapidly expanding. The 15.4 million iPads supplied by Apple reached about 4 times the total volume of Japanese personal computers in the same period (from October to December 2011). And many manufacturers have begun to get involved in the tablet terminal market, Apple also began to compete with competitors in the market.

From October to December 2011, the global share of the iPad was 57%, which was 7 percentage points lower than the 64% in July-September (according to the US IHS iSuppli survey). Amazon America grabbed Apple’s market share.

In November 2011, after Amazon launched the “Kindle Fire” with e-book features in the US, its global share from October to December soared to 14%, ranking it second (IHS iSuppli survey). The Kindle Fire uses a business model that sells through content sales instead of hardware terminals. The price of each device is only 199 US dollars, which leads consumers to rush to buy.

Samsung Galaxy’s “Galaxy Tab”, which ranks third in the world (8%), is selling for US$300 in the United States, and its sales are rising. More and more consumers are no longer opting for a high-priced iPad2 of more than $499.

Apple does not sit idly by. Instead, it intends to use the original iPad 2 to beat competitors that sell at low prices. While launching new models, Apple announced that the iPad2, which is priced at US$499, will be sold at a reduced price of US$100. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, confidently stated that “the price cuts have a big impact. This will allow more consumers to buy the iPad.”

And the new iPad has improved its image processing capabilities through new processors. Its goal is to target consumers who are not accustomed to using personal computers and consumers who need easy-to-use terminals.

"Creativity is Lost" Criticism Apple put forward new products while at the same time put forward a competition strategy, but it has a blind spot in strategy. The shape of the new iPad and the iPad2 have almost no changes, and some people have issued disappointments such as “lack of new ideas” and “no innovation”.

The reason seems to lie not only in Steve Jobs, the late former chairman who was called the demonstrator. Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of industrial design who played a big role in Apple’s creation of innovative products, did not attend the conference.

In the past, when the main products such as the iPad were released, Eve would generally appear in Apple’s public videos of the world and elaborated on the excellence of the products. In this open video, only senior executives in marketing, hardware, and software were seen. Ever did not appear at the press conference's podium.

Reducing the price of the original iPad 2 is expected to have a certain effect, but it is difficult to say that this is a creative countermeasure. Even a very ordinary appliance manufacturer can think of this approach. Once Apple released the iPod shuffle, which is not only a cheap version, in the portable music player iPod series, capturing the heart of consumers, and the iPad has not seen such measures.

Terminal developers of leading electronics companies in Japan point out that “Apple’s winning model is to show consumers some innovations each time they launch a new model, and this time the new iPad broke this practice”.

Can Apple continue to offer new products to the world as former Chairman Steve Jobs did when he took office? CEO Cook summed up the conference with the following statement. "We will offer many other innovative products this year. This is just the beginning." Apple's sales and net profits for the period from October to December 2011 alone exceeded US$46.3 billion and US$13 billion, respectively. Whether the remarks made by its top leaders can be achieved still needs to be verified.