Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Apple's Best-Case Scenario: The iPad Is the New iPod

Are you an Apple bull looking for even more ammunition to bolster your faith in the company? Barclays Capital has you covered. In a report today the research shop predicts that:

  • Tablets computers, a category that didn’t really exist until this spring, will be here to stay;
  • Apple (AAPL) is going to own most of that market for years to come;
  • This is yet more bad news for Microsoft (MSFT) and its Windows franchise, as well as PC manufacturers like Dell, in particular.

All points you’ve probably thought of before, if you’re the aforementioned Apple bull. But here are some numbers to chew on. Barclays predicts:

  • That consumers will buy 15 million tablets this year and 28 million in 2011, and that Apple will hold onto a 75 percent market share next year;
  • That the rise of tablets will indeed cut into PC sales, primarily in the netbook/notebook market–enough that Barclays is cutting its PC sales growth estimate for 2010 from 21 percent to 19 percent (still, as Steve Ballmer would say, 19 percent!).

Like graphics more than numbers? Okay. This one is pretty telling: Barclays’ estimate of how the PC market shakes out if you throw iPads into the mix. Steve Jobs and company aren’t knocking on Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) door anytime soon, but they are getting close to Dell’s (DELL). (Click to enlarge.)

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald