Jobs Takes Shots At The Competition

It wasn't enough that Apple outsold its tablet competitors by nine to one. The company's chief executive officer, Steve Jobs, took a few shots at other tablet makers as well.

In a somewhat surprising appearance, Jobs announced the Apple iPad 2 at an event in San Francisco. However, before he showed off the new product, he took time to dish out some barbs towards many of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company's competitors. From the start, he said Apple was ahead of the game.

Many have said this is the most successful consumer product ever launched. Over 90 percent market share... our competitors were flummoxed, Jobs said. He then mentioned the fact that the iPad easily outsold every Tablet PC ever sold.

Jobs then took a shot at Samsung, which released the first iPad competitor, the Galaxy Tab, last year. He used a quote from Samsung vice president Lee Young-hee, which said As you heard, your sell-in was quite aggressive around two million. In terms of sell-out, we believe it was quite small.

From there, Jobs dismissed Google's Android Honeycomb operating system as a legitimate contender to the iOS. While the iPad has had 65,000 apps and counting, he said the Honeycomb operating system only had 100 apps and counting.

Honeycomb (Android 3.0) hasn't been out as long as Froyo (Android 2.2) or Gingerbread (Android 2.3) -- it only went on sale in February -- so its app complement is correspondingly small.

2010, according to Jobs, was the year of the iPad. We've gotten off to an exceptional first year. We'd like to build on that. What about 2011? Everyone's got a tablet. Will 2011 be the year of the copycat? If we did nothing, maybe a little bit... probably not.

Of course, from there, Jobs announced the iPad 2. He ended the event with one last parting shot at the tablet competitors. He said the difference between Apple and its competitors is at the very core of their strategy.

It's in Apple's DNA that technology is not enough. It's tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities. Nowhere is that more true than in the post-PC products. Our competitors are looking at this like it's the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this. These are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, more intuitive, Jobs said.

Samsung and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

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