Analyst: Other Competitors Can’t Match Apple’s “Design Efficiencies”

Samsung, Motorola, and even Dell have given their all to compete with Apple and the iPad, yet everyone’s still trying to figure out why such competitors can’t even come close to iPad sales numbers. iSuppli analyst Wayne Lam claims that Apple’s tight control over iPad hardware and software gives the tablet certain “design efficiencies” that other manufacturers cannot match.

“These efficiencies become obvious in areas like the memory and the battery, where Apple maintains advantages in cost, space savings and performance compared with every competitor in the business.”

Other tablet makers employ operating systems from third-party firms—such as Google Inc., which provides the Android software used in most competitive products on the market today. Many of these tablet makers also outsource the blueprints of their products to third parties, employing reference designs and design services from contract manufacturers.

This contrasts with the model employed by Apple, which uses its own operating system and maintains tight control of its design, components and contract manufacturers.”

The analyst argues that, when comparing the iPad and competing Android tablets, Apple’s manufacturing process has to be considered.

Apple doesn’t have to offer high performance hardware to meet software requirements because Apple maintains control over its products from conception to assembly. Such a system offers Apple the upper hand in terms of hardware efficiency.

“In the current-generation iPad 2, the density of synchronous dynamic random access memory is 512 megabytes—half that of the 1 gigabyte used in competitive designs… Likewise, the original iPad contained half as much SDRAM as comparable competitive devices with single-core applications processors.

“The iPad’s efficient memory usage stems from the fundamental difference in the architecture of the operating system,” Lam said. “Apple’s iOS handles multitasking differently than other tablet operating systems, allowing it to reduce the amount of memory required to support the microprocessor.”