Analysts: iPhone way way up in 2010-11, iPad to beat out netbooks
According to a Digital Daily report, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty predicted the iPhone installed base will climb to 100 million by the end of 2011. She expects sales of 42 million units in 2010, assuming a 30 percent upgrade rate. If that rate is greater, then so will the installed base (duh!).
Result: “We see the iPhone installed base rising from approximately 30M subscribers at the end of 2009 to over 100M by the end of 2011,” says Huberty. “We believe there are several key drivers of iPhone upgrades including:
1) Redesigned hardware with many new important features, 2) ‘Stickiness’ of the installed base due to App store and iTunes, 3) 57 percent of U.S. installed base is not fully upgradeable to iOS4 (i.e. no multitasking), 4) Early upgrade incentives from AT&T and 5) Maturation of the installed base. We would also point to AT&T’s introduction of tiered data pricing (that potentially reduces iPhone total cost of ownership by 20 percent+) as a possible driver of the strong initial pre-order activity.”
Reminder: at the WWDC last week, Steve Jobs said the current iOS installed base is 100 million devices.
In another analyst paper, Forrester Research said the tablet market will be 20.4 million units in 2015. More users will buy tablet computers than netbooks.
"Tablet growth will come at the expense of Netbooks, which have a similar grab-and-go media consumption and Web browsing use case as tablets but don't synchronize data across services like the iPad does," Forrester Research Analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said in a statement.
"Consumers didn't ask for tablets. In fact, Forrester's data shows that the top features consumers say they want in a PC are a complete mismatch with the features of the iPad. But Apple is successfully teaching consumers to want this new device."
According to the analysis, desktop sales will slip in that time frame. However, I don't know that this trend will apply to Macs. The iPad may let users who picked a MacBook, purchase a desktop machine, such as the quad-core iMac.
In the past month, I've noticed that the discussion about "what Mac should I buy?" has become much more complicated. The outcome requires a hard look at what work you do, what content you process and where all that work takes place. And time spent at the Apple Store. The details about file transfers from devices such as cameras, keyboards and applications are being worked out. It's still a hard decision.