When Apple unveiled the iPad Air back in October, they curiously decided to keep the iPad 2 around for another generation at a $399 price point… the exact same price as an entry-level iPad mini with Retina Display.
In theory, Apple’s idea here seems to have been to price the vintage iPad 2 at a sub-$400 price point so as to have a cheaper 9.7-inch tablet available for educational institutions, budget shoppers and the like. But it looks like no one’s really all that interested, with only one customer in twenty opting to buy an iPad 2 in the latest quarter. Despite this, though, average price of a purchased iPad fell for the second year in a row.
Those numbers come from the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), who tracked all iPad sales in the holiday 2013. They say that 41% of all iPads sold that quarter were iPad Airs, 25% were non-Retina iPad minis, 16% were retina iPad minis (these didn’t go on sale until November, hence the lower unit sales), and only 5% of all iPads sold were iPad 2’s. That’s a huge drop from a year previous, where 27% of iPads were the iPad 2.
Intriguingly, the popularity of the iPad 2 fell off despite the fact that people are, on average, buying cheaper iPads every year: in the fourth quarter of 2013, the average iPad price was $439, compared to $535 a year ago. It seems as if more and more people are getting by with 16GB iPad minis this year, doesn’t it?
Via: Macgasm
