Apple CEO Tim Cook said he wasn’t worried about tablet competition and the pricing of Amazon’s Kindle Fire, a new tablet entry at $199. And given Apple’s success with the iPad so far why would he?
The inevitable Kindle Fire question emerged on Apple’s earnings conference call and Cook largely swatted it away (Apple statement, Techmeme, CNET). He said:
We’ve seen several competitors come to market to try to compete with the iPad over time. Some had different form factors, different price points and I think it’s reasonable to say that none of these have gained any traction thus far. In fact, as all of those competitors were coming to market our share actually went up. In the June quarter, according to IDC, we were responsible for three out of every four tablets sold. I think when you really assess this thing and look at iOS5, iCloud, the ecosystem with iTunes and the App Store and books and movies and the fact that we have over 140,000 native Apps for iPad versus a number in the hundreds for the other guys, I feel very confident about our ability to compete and extremely confident in our product pipeline.
Cook was later asked about how big the tablet market can be. The answer: Tablets will ultimately be larger than the PC market. He said:
We’ve now sold 40 million on a cumulative basis and it’s pretty clear to me that if you forecast out in time that the tablet market, I still believe it will be larger than the PC market. That’s not a guidance number. That’s just something that I very much believe.
