Can you hear Apple's iPad competitors sobbing?

By Jonny Evans

"I said, Oh it's bigger than the universe,
It's bigger than the universe,
It's bigger than the two of us."
Suede, 'Electricity'

Somewhere in the world a rapidly-growing landfill site is becoming the last port of call for all those Android iPad wannabes. This tottering graveyard of tablet dreams grows even higher once this season's fire sale on unsold non-iPad iPads finally reaches its sobbing end. Meanwhile the Apple [AAPL] fable factory tells us the iPad 3 "has been delayed", though how you can "delay" something which has never been announced beyond Apple rumor websites is utterly beyond me.

[ABOVE: 2011 has not been the year of the copy cats.]

The field of broken dreams

Many of us may recall the beginning of this year, characterized as it was by huge optimism among non-Apple firms in the consumer electronics space who madly truly deeply wanted shareholders to believe they had a single hope of a chance to deliver tablets that could kill the iPad.

Their mistakes cost millions. Think about it:

• Fortunes were spent creating manufacturing lines, more cash went on design (well, Apple's currently arguing that perhaps more should have been spent on design by many of its competitors) and logistics and component supplies.
• Huge great heavy wads of cash were laid down to ensure transport and logistics and packaging and advertising.
• You may even remember the names of these forgotten tablet legions: the Motorola Xoom; Galaxy Tab; BlackBerry Playbook and many, many more. Like chimera, these whispered ghosts flickered in the morning breeze, until the heat of Apple's rising iPad dawn blew that mist away.

There may be a few readers equipped with memories who might recall this year's CES, where over a hundred different tablet prototypes made their blushing debut, flickering their eyes prettily at passing tech pundits, curtseying respectfully as they sought the succour of a kind word and a little press attention.

[ABOVE: Analyst Michael Gartenberg told us competitors were going nowhere.]

Nightmare for accounts

Some of these things actually shipped. Some shipped in quantity (Editors note: no they didn't). Some were shipped and not returned. Though many were returned. That's when the landfill site began to fill.

All those thousands of Android-powered tablets went dutifully out into retail networks to be picked-up by the thousands of eager and enthuisiastic Apple-haters who exist according to some dreamers. Of course, that audience is not as large as the hype tells us it is, and not many sold.

This didn't show up in the financial results, at first. Then, as the months went by, manufacturers began to notice that crates of these tablets were being returned unsold. The landfill pile grew. And the accountants began working overtime, figuring out how to write-off these failures.

Now it is August. In the Northern hemisphere we're looking at the fading flush of summer, a new thing called 'austerity culture' and social instability.

[This story is from Computerworld's Apple Holic blog. Follow on Twitter or subscribe via RSS to make sure you don't miss a beat.]

The funny thing is, this has translated into even less demand for non-Apple tablets. And this has caused Apple contenders across the board to slash prices on their tablets. Companies like Acer, Asus, HTC, Motorola, RIM, and Samsung  will all emulate HP and start lowering their prices by the end of September.

This isn't an attempt to make a profit. This is damage control. How are those same companies going to explain the costs of their failed tablet adventure to their shareholders? Who are they going to blame? Apple? Again?

Apple owns the tablet industry. Apple is the name everybody loves and everybody loathes. Apple is the firm many strive to emulate yet remain fundamentally unable to imitate at the core of their corporate soul.

Digitimes tells us sales of non-iPad tablets have been dismal. Apple has sold over ten times the number of iPads than its three biggest competitors combined have actually managed to ship to retailers. (Meaning competitors have sold even less than this).

Tear up the spreadsheets

This is real evidence that the changing marketshare predicted by analysts all this year just isn't taking place. Because at the end of the day it doesn't matter how many of these non-iPad iPads make it into retail, all that matters is that they sell. And they aren't.

Asus shipped just 700,000 tablets in three months this year -- but sold only 500,000 of these. That's not even enough to create a viable apps economy.

So competitors are going for a price war, but you may have seen those reports which told us Apple has been pretty lean with its own machine: it makes a profit on iPads but has already deliberately set its margins lower than it has traditionally. That's because it wanted to grow its market as fast as it could.

Given the fierce competition for components, just how much price flexibility exists for competitors? Not a great deal in my opinion.

At this stage they are just trying to sell them for as much as they can get in order to minimize the damage to their profit margins and shareholder value.

Vacancy: Apple requires real competition

Beyond a little laughter before returning to work on iPad 4, what's Apple's response going to be? iPad 3, most likely. You know, the iPad Apple's army of fortune tellers have been merrily insisting Apple will ship this year, following a John Gruber piece speculating on the same.

Of course, it isn't going to ship this year. iPad 2 is doing fine right now and will become even more compelling once the company switches on its music and media services from the cloud with iOS 5 and iCloud. And in any case, with iPhone 5 set to ship in the next 16 weeks or so, the company doesn't want to cannibalize smartphone sales with a new tablet.

I doubt the iPad 3 was every scheduled to ship at this time. And now component suppliers are saying it won't appear until next year, and will have a Retina Display. Maybe.

One things for sure, burned by heavy losses in the tablet industry, competing firms are unlikely to come back with a serious alternative for a good six months.

And by that time, Apple will dazzle and surprise with yet another iPad implementation that does things no one else has thought of, even while its enemies try to make devices which have a hope in Hades of competing with the model Apple is selling now. Until they manage to catch Apple up, when it comes to non-Apple tablets, all I can smell is toast. What about you?

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