Apple iPad Pro set to revive sagging tablet market

Apple’s attempt to reignite interest in the tablet device category has spawned a curious beast in the iPad Pro.

Apple’s attempt to reignite interest in the tablet device category has spawned a curious beast. The iPad Pro — a 12.9 inch tablet, armed with Apple’s newest A9X chip set, a pencil stylus and a keyboard. The iPad Pro is about as far as you can get from Steve Jobs’ mission statement for Apple, but this isn’t the first time Apple CEO Tim Cook had decided to go against Jobs’ playbook.

Cook’s decision to super-size the iPhone last year certainly paid off for Apple. But don’t expect the iPad Pro to have the same impact on iPad sales, which have been flagging for quite some time.

If anything the jumbo iPad raises more questions than answers. Just how well will the iOS 9 operating system translate on the big screen? Is it compelling enough for users to start substituting their MacBook Air? Has Apple now pretty much ruled out the prospect of making tablet-hybrid a hybrid?

The idea of hybrid has probably never been on Apple’s ­agenda because that would mean either coalescing its two operating systems (a la Windows 8) or ­potentially at some point making iOS the primary driver of Apple’s future. That depends on when Apple finally decides to shift its gaze away from phone, tablets and watches and into something more dramatic.

For the time being however, the iPad Pro represents two clear themes in the mobile device market. Firstly, it will be seen not just by Apple fan base but also by the company’s rivals — Samsung and Microsoft — as a much-needed booster for the tablet market.

According to a survey carried out by research firm IDC, tablet sales have cooled dramatically in 2014, rising just 4.4 per cent for the year to 229.6 million units, after a jump of more than 50 per cent in 2013. While Apple continues to hold a market share of around 28 per cent, iPad sales have been on a steady decline. In June, the company posted an 18 per cent year-on-year drop in unit sales and a 23 per cent reduction in quarterly revenue compared to the same ­period in 2014.

One reason for this slowdown has been the reluctance of consumers to replace their existing iPads with newer models and the popularity of larger “phablet” smartphones. The iPad Pro won’t really change that trend in a hurry.

The second and a far more important aspect to consider is that the iPad Pro is Apple’s first attempt at making tablets more than just consumption devices. The big screen, the stylus and the emphasis of the jumbo tablet is productivity, a device that can comfortably slip between work and home.

It’s what Microsoft has been aiming for some time now with the Surface and Apple’s desire to join the party is good news for Microsoft. No wonder Microsoft was so keen to showcase just how well Office 360 works on iOS.

But repositioning the iPad for the enterprise space will be a slow burn for Apple.

This is uncharted territory for Apple and Tim Cook isn’t the sort of leader who jumps into a situation without the requisite deliberation.

The iPad Pro looks more like the next step in Tim Cook’s overarching plan to make Apple a serious and a viable entity in the enterprise space.

It’s a market segment that holds a lot of potential but is also notoriously resistant to change. The iPad Pro now becomes that polished piece of hardware through which Apple starts to showcase the fruit of its combined labour with IBM.

The existing deal between the two companies is already starting to deliver workplace-focused apps. In March, Apple and IBM released new apps, exclusively for iOS but not available in the App Store, including Passenger Care, an app for customer service agents in airports; Dynamic Buy, which allows retailers to look at how products are selling on the fly, and Advisor Alerts, a banking app that uses analytics to help financial professionals prioritise client related tasks on the go.

So there’s plenty of potential there and the successive iterations of iPad Pro will inevitably sport a well populated app ecosystem. The biggest factor in Apple’s favour is that iPads have been slowly but steadily making inroads into the enterprise, as part of the broader bring your own device (BYOD) trend, and this provides a handy platform for Apple and its supersized iPad.

There might be some truth in the criticism that the iPad Pro is just an example of Apple playing catch up with Microsoft and the Surface.

But as the Apple Watch clearly shows, there’s no compelling ­reason for Apple to be first to the market with anything. All it needs is a quality product and the Apple reality distortion field can take care of the rest.