This is a big part of it. I talked with a buddy of mine recently who is a big fan of Apple products and owns pretty much every Apple product out there. At some point we started talking about the latest iPad and he said "Man, despite already having iPad 3, I am going to buy this. Not because I need it, but because I have to own it". I know more than a few people who think that way.
I'm not going to pass judgment because I've personally burned a lot of money on expensive gaming machines just because I wanted to play games on the highest settings. Everybody derives pleasure and satisfaction from different things and if burning tons of cash on Apple gadgets makes someone's life better and more enjoyable... more power to them.
Your friend probably represents less than 1% of Apple's total customers. He's not a "big part" of it. That you know him doesn't mean that all of Apple's millions and millions of customers are anything like him.
I think if people like this didn't already own iPads, iPhones etc you could write off their sentiment as due to marketing. But this guy already owns one, He's clearly very well aware of exactly what it can do, how it works and what the benefits are.
But his opinion can't be due to rational, fact based assessment of his practical experience with his iPad. No. It must be irrational and mindless based on marketing. It can't possibly be that he's happy with his iPad because, you know, it's actually good and would appreciate one that's even better. That can't possibly be it.
Welcome to every tech product. I used to read the PC Magazine type publications in the late 1990s. Maximum PC and the like. They'd hype up each new graphics card and CPU so much. I remember feeling bad that I had just bought the 300 MHz PII when the 333 MHz came out.
IMHO, Apple's situation is much better than the CPU/GPU upgrade cycle. They release like once every 1.5 years in each product category instead of like every 3-6 months. And they hype up each release much less than AnandTech/Toms/etc hype up the latest NVIDIA/ATI cards.
No evidence points in that direction. It'd be possible if Apple had only a small amount of loyal customers (like in the nineties), but obviously they do not.
You're saying there's no evidence that the mass market would buy things they might not need just because marketing tells them they should? There are a lot of people who buy the latest clothing fashions or buy a new car every year/two years when the newest model comes out, a lot more than a "small amount of loyal customers".
How many people bought netbooks only to find out they had no real use for one? Now tell me that people wouldn't do the same thing for a product they actually do find genuinely useful. Find where that intersects with the people who have a need for the new features of the latest iPad and you'll find the number of people who are buying the newest version of the hot device simply because they want the newest version.
What do you really need? I still meet people all the time who adore their netbooks (though many did also ditch them as soon as they actually had to use them – I’m seeing that with some tablets, not so often with iPads).
Besides, why do you assume that those people are buying their second iPad? Maybe they are buying an iPad for their kids? Maybe those who didn’t want to get one because of price are now buying one?
I really don’t get that tablets are supposedly not useful. I love my tablet. I use it all the time to read, surf, browse and write e-mails. It does nearly all the things I used to love doing on my PC so much better. It’s just all-around awesome in every respect, worth every single cent. Simply perfect. There has been no other computer I ever owned I liked as much as my tablet. I would not be surprised if quite a few other people also feel that way, maybe to a lesser degree.
I didn't claim that tablets were not needed or that they are not useful. I actually stated otherwise; the intersection between people who need the latest features and the people who are upgrading. I'm also not arguing that these people are not simply buying a new iPad. I'm just trying to argue against the parent's opinion that it's not possible for people to upgrade simply to have the latest tech.
The inference I get from your comment is that you feel I was arguing that people don't have a need for tablets. This isn't true, I specifically stated otherwise. What I was addressing is the notion that it's not possible for a large part of the market to do year-over-year (or 6 month) upgrades to the iPad they already own.
Truth. The 黄牛 (yellow cows) will distort iPad sales in the states for a couple more weeks as they seek to satisfy mainland China gray market demand. It will level off around Thanks Giving I hope (I want to buy one myself to take back to China, for personal use!).
