Apple rivals are more likely to fight amongst themselves then score a knock-out blow against the iPad, one Wall Street expert said Monday. The iconic iPad will still have 60 percent of the market by 2020, he contends.
“Future tablets are more likely to steal share from one another than from the iPad,” Needham analyst Charlie Wolf tells investors. Despite Motorola’s Android-based Xoom, RIM’s QNX-based PlayBook and HP’s webOS-powered TouchPad, all “have been greeted with a yawn and lackluster sales,” he adds.
So far, the iPad cannot be touched on price or the all-important app count. The iPad’s parts costs “are materially lower than those of competing tablets,” according to the analyst.
As for apps, which Wolf describes as what turns “a slab into a versatile device”, Apple again has a dominant lead. Rivals have a best “hundreds” of apps compared to “more than 100,000” on the iPad, he said.
