Apple COO Tim Cook Dismisses Android Tablets As Bizarre And Vapor
Today there's been quite the outpouring of yahoos and woops for the release of Apple's first quarter results which showed a growth in revenue by 71 percent and an earnings growth of 78 percent. Wowzers. Not only that, but iPads alone sold 7.33 million, that's MILLION during this past quarter. That's a lot, if you don't already know. This might very well be because of the apparent lack of competition in tablet-based computers on the market. Today in the accompanying sales call with Apple, COO Tim Cook took time to respond to a question on competition, and his words were sharply put.
When the question "What about iPad competitors?" came up during the sales call today, Apple COO Tim Cook had the following to say:
"There's not much out there as you know. There are two kinds of groups today (in the market) — the ones using a Windows-based operating system. They're big, heavy and expensive. Weak battery life. Need keyboard or stylus. From our point of view, customers aren't interested in that. Then you have the Android tablets. The variety shipping today, the OS wasn't designed for a tablet — but Google said this. So you wind up having the size of a tablet that's less than reasonable. Or one that's not even a real tablet experience. It's a "scaled-up smartphone" – that's a bizarre product in our view. Those are what is shipping today. If you do a side-by-side with an iPad, some enormous percentage are going to pick the iPad. We have no concern there. In terms of next generation. There's nothing shipping yet. So I don't know. "Today they're vapor." However, we're not sitting still. We have a huge first-mover advantage. And a huge user advantage from iTunes to the App Store. Huge number of apps and an ecosystem. We're very confident entering into a fight with anyone."
A fight! Oh my goodness. He notes that they see the rest of the tablet market as cut between Windows and Android. He notes that with a Windows machine you need either a keyboard or a stylus, and that they're big, heavy, and expensive, and have weak battery life. For Android, he notes that the tablets shipping today are shipping with an OS that wasn't originally built for a tablet-sized computer.
Going on about Android and Android tablets out today, he mentions the words "scaled-up smartphone" and calls that product "bizarre." Cook goes on to say that they've got no concern, that if faced with a choice between an Android tablet and an Apple tablet that "an enormous percentage" of people would choose the iPad, and that with what he's seeing on the Android side of the plane he'd say "Today they're vapor."
He finishes this thought by saying they've got a "huge first-mover advantage," noting that they're not sitting still, and letting everyone know that they've got a huge user advantage "from iTunes to the App Store." Then finally, "We're very confident entering into a fight with anyone."
[Via TechCrunch]