iPad, tablet demand outpacing netbooks and other PCs
updated 03:50 pm EDT, Fri August 20, 2010
Forrester sees 14pc of US wanting iPads
Demand for tablets like the iPad has reached the point where it's more popular than just about all other categories of device, Forrester discovered discovered in a research note put out late Thursday. As of June, 14 percent of shoppers online were planning to get an iPad or a similar tablet within a year where just eight percent expected to get a netbook. The demand was higher than for desktop computers (four percent), e-readers like the Kindle (11 percent) and even notebooks (13 percent).
The tablet category was one of the few to clearly be in growth, as just 1.9 percent already owned one. Netbook ownership was exactly flat and suggested that many buyers were replacing their existing systems rather than upgrading.
Although other tablets exist, Apple's device was so dominant that others were non-issues. Only 10 percent knew of tablets besides the iPad, and many of these couldn't identify an actual competitor. Many of those mentioned were either marginal, like the Archos 7 or the JooJoo, while others mentioned tablets that aren't shipping so far, such as the HP Slate.
Contrary to stereotypes, many are more likely to already have a computer, including a netbook; the iPad owner has an average of 3.6 computers where the rest own an average of exactly three. About 24 percent of iPad owners have a netbook where just six percent of the general public claims the same. General technology ownership is logically high: 69 percent have a modern game console where just 37 percent of the US could say the same.
Buyers were appropriately about three times more likely to have an iPhone or Mac, but about 73 percent of iPad users were still using Windows systems. Tablet users of all kinds were noticeably more likely to view media online, use social networks and store data online.
Forrester saw the collective effect of the iPad as triggering "tablet mania." It almost single-handedly establishing not just the category in sales but also in the public mind, which is now accepting tablets as a category even after almost a decade of Windows tablet PCs. [via Wired]
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Investor, computers, industry, gadgets, Archos, tablet, Apple, Fusion Garage, Joojoo, iPad, Forrester
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Joined: Aug 2001
Impressive
Assuming this survey is even remotely accurate, it bodes incredibly well for Apple--given that there are basically no other currently-available options in even remotely the same category as the iPad, it means that ALL of that interest is directed at the single device. It'll be interesting to see how much effect brand memory has once some real competitive Android or other mobile-OS based tablets do start shipping in volume.
And if you're Microsoft, imagine how shaming and enraging this must be--you've been supplying the OS for devices like this for a decade, and in less than six months Apple walks in and creates a single product that not only does what your OS had utterly failed to do in the past ten years, but according to this survey is also threatening to outsell NOTEBOOKS.
Which, given marketshare, means Windows notebooks. Meaning one of MS's major markets.
That, that's got to be entirely terrifying if you're MS.