Love Affair

Zal Bilimoria, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, writing yesterday for Recode: “Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over”.

What I love best is that the headline says “the tablet”, not “tablets”, but then the article goes on to talk about a lot of non-iPad tablets. Tablets, in general, may well not be living up to Bilimoria’s expectations from a few years ago. The tablet, though, which is to say the iPad, is doing pretty well. Growth has slowed; in the just-completed holiday quarter, iPad sales were 26 million units, compared to 23 the year prior. But the notion that iPad usage isn’t growing — largely at the expense of Windows PCs — is silly.

This week-old tweet from Horace Dediu is as good a counterargument as any. Not just because of the data it presents, but what he used to make it.

★ Friday, 7 February 2014