Apple executives speak: On toaster-fridges, financial guidance, and lawsuits

25.04.2012

We've now--through the last quarter, I should say, which is just two years after we shipped the initial iPad--we've sold 67 million. To put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods, and over three years for that many iPhones, and we were extremely happy with the trajectory on all of those products.

I think that iPad... it's a profound product. The breadth of it is incredible, and the appeal is universal. I could not be happier with being in the market, and the level at which we're innovating both the product and the ecosystem here is incredible.

Now in terms of the market itself, IDC and Gartner and Forrester has some numbers out there; I think Gartner is saying there's somewhere around 325 [million tablet devices] or so by 2015, Forrester is 375 million, somewhere around there, and so basically they're in the mid-300s which is about where the PC market is today, and 2015 is only three years from now.

I think even the more formal predictors outside of [Apple] are beginning to see these lines cross, and so I strongly believe that they will. Now, having said that, I also believe that there is a very good market for the MacBook Air and we continue to innovate in that product. But I do think that it appeals to someone that has a little bit different requirements.

You wouldn't want to put these things together because you wind up compromising in both and not pleasing either user. Some people will prefer to own both, and that's great too. But I think to make the compromises of convergence, we're not going to that party. Others might, from a defensive point of view, particularly. But we're going to play in both.