Today, when low-priced tablets crowd the market, the 9.7” iPad, massively controlling more than 90% of the market two years ago, seems to lose ground under the price-cutting gun fires from its rivals and shows no Sales King’s luster as in the old days. However, according to TrendForce, a global market intelligence provider, tides will turn as Apple showcases its new-generation products in Q3. With an estimated total of 82.1 million iPad units likely to be shipped this year, the Cupertino giant’s 9.7” tablet has a chance to recover its reputation and regain its long-gone competitive advantages.

According to Eric Chiou, TrendForce’s research director, the 9.7” iPad seems to hobble, but with new iPad’s competitiveness in the aspects of industrial design, product positioning, costs and prices, and market segmentation, the trend is not pessimistic.

For example, Chiou indicated that after the weary bombing of low-priced products one after another, the 7”-8” tablet market has only ashes that remained. Contrarily, in the segment of larger 9.7”-10.6”, in addition to that Android products’ price war hasn’t spread to this area, the previously highly-anticipated Microsoft’s Windows tablets have only poor sales on several factors such as prices and efficiency. For iPad, as long as the product design and pricing strategy are carried out appropriately, iPad can easily gain the right to serve the ball in the “Eden” of the large-sized tablet market.

Based on TrendForce’s estimates, as small-sized tablets remain mainstream, and as the iPad faces a product transition, the iPad shipment in H1 2013 will clearly be lower than that of the iPad mini. The situation is likely to change in the second half of the year, when the new 9.7” iPad undergoes major design overhauls and regains its momentum. By then, it is estimated that the shipments of iPad and iPad mini will see a 50-50 split.

For the full article, please see: http://press.trendforce.com/en/node/5135.