Apple products may be many things, but being economical isn’t one of them. Take the iPad for instance. It may have a virtual stranglehold on the tablet market, but that hasn’t stopped Amazon Inc. from sneaking in with its own budget Android tablet, the Kindle Fire. The sub $200 price barrier has been breached by Amazon, bringing in a lot of newer customers into the tablet market, but Apple has stayed steadfast with its $499 price tag for the entry level (16 GB, WiFi only) iPad.
With the launch of the new iPad though, the erstwhile flagship Apple tablet, the iPad 2, has seen price cuts that have sent its price below $400. This means that with the iPad 2, Apple now offers a quality alternative to the iPad that it’s selling in the market.
Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) has compiled a report detailing the exact sales figures of the iPad 2 and the new iPad between February and April of this year. Interestingly enough, they were found to be roughly similar. Since March 16th (when the new iPad was launched in retail stores), the new iPad made up 59 percent of all Apple iPad sales, while the iPad 2 made up the rest.
The takeaway here is that the iPad 2 has been benefitting a lot from its reduced price tag. The iPad 2 is an extremely capable tablet by its own merits, and barring the Retina display and the upgraded processor, it offers a practically identical experience to its successor in the eyes of a layman. Given that the Kindle Fire has seen a considerable decline in sales itself, it is quite likely that the relatively cheap iPad 2 has been eating into the Amazon tablet’s sales.
