The Competition

Amazon has joined the trend set by Samsung in knocking Apple in its commercials. Amazon’s latest commercial for its range of Kindle devices goes all out to make the point that you can buy three Kindle devices for the cost of one iPad.

iOS devices combined -- including iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch -- may have outsold Android devices combined -- including Android phones and tablets -- by a narrow margin last quarter. During the Q1 2012 Apple conference call today, Tim Cook pegged the iOS device number at 62 million. Android numbers are harder to come by, but last month Andy Rubin said 700,000 were now being activated a day. Given the prior two months were likely less, the following month perhaps more, it probably works out to 60 or 61 million.

During the same call, Tim Cook also revealed that the Amazon Kindle Fire had no affect on iPad sales, far he can tell. Sprint ultimately paid dearly to get the iPhone on their network in order to remain competitive. Verizon announced their results today, and revealed that slightly more than half of their smartphone sales were iPhones.

Apple has long dominated their competitors in terms of smartphone profit share but recently Android was assumed to have a big lead in market share. I've long discounted that, saying it's irrelevant.

And nothing that was announced today changes that.

The late Steve Jobs called 2011 "the year of the iPad 2" and almost a year after it was introduced, almost 2 years after the original iPad was introduced, it remains a product selling in the tens of millions with absolutely no competition in sight.

And that's a shame because, as a consumer, the one thing I want most is strong, meaningful competition for the iPad.

RIM announced their Q3 2011 results today, including the bloodbath that is PlayBook sales, and clusterfrak that is BlackBerry 10 superphones not being available until late 2012.

RIM needs to either get it together and become the competition we sorely need, or hope their stock drops low enough that CrackBerry Kevin can buy them with left over watch money and turn them around himself.

Either way, it deeply angers me to have to say, I told you thusly.