“The iPad is far more subtle, in fact it really is like a drawing pad. They will sell by the million. It will change the way we look at everything from reading newspapers to the drawing pad.
“It can be anything you want it to be. This is the nearest we have got to seeing what I would call a universal machine.
According to a new survey, 44% of iPad purchasers say they won't be buying a notebook because of the device.
via Survey: Consumers are replacing other computers with iPad.
Count me in with those 44%.
Research #Theory #iPad #iPhone · 2 comments
In a thought-provoking article in The Motley Fool (Predicting Failure: Testing the "Disruptive Innovation" Model ) summarizing recent research in disruptive innovation, the following quote jumped out at me:
Then again, the model is dead wrong 15 percent of the time. Lest you think Thurston won’t admit to failures, he points out several instances where his own predictions are wrong. Take the Apple iPhone, he says -- if you apply the model to this specific product, instead of the company as a whole. Apple was a new entrant in mobile phones. The iPhone provided better Internet performance and a better interface at a higher cost -- not poorer and cheaper -- yet it was very successful from the start. “When it’s wrong, it’s interesting,” Thurston says. “We hope to improve the theory.”
This is of particular interest to me because I've always felt that Apple had a disruptive track record that was not recognized by disruption theory practitioners. I think the reason is that casual observers place Apple's products in narrow categories rather than seeing the real jobs that the products are hired to do.
The reason iPhone gets misdiagnosed by disruption theory is that it is placed alongside other phones and looks sustaining. That's what the quote above implies and it's a common mistake. I first did that myself. However a cursory review of how the product is used (see ComScore and Nielsen surveys on usage) shows that it's used for browsing and applications more than for mobile telephony. These jobs it's hired to do have more in common with personal computing. Therefore, when you put an iPhone next to a computer, its disruptive potential becomes clear. This placement also leads you to think of a trajectory that predicts the iPod touch and the iPad as natural improvements for Apple.
That is why I classify the category the iPhone competes in as Mobile Computing--a category of products that is undoubtedly disruptive (less powerful but more convenient and often cheaper) vis-a-vis traditional personal computing.
Similar analyses for the iPad, the iPod would also reveal a pattern of new market disruption for Apple.
Apple today announced that it sold its one millionth iPad on Friday, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have already downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.
via Apple Sells One Million iPads.
On March 14 I wrote:
I will be surprised if the number of units sold in Apple’s CQ2 doesn't exceed 1 million. This will probably mean better performance with a new platform than Nokia, Google, Sony Ericsson or HTC and perhaps better than the iPhone.
On March 9 I wrote:
In either case, iPad will sell better than the iPhone out of the gate.
The iPhone sold 1 million within 74 days. The iPad sold 1 million units in less than half the time the iPhone did.
Over the next 18 months more than 1,800 [iPads] will be distributed to the hospital’s physicians allowing them to move away from paper-based notes, prescriptions and medical documents.
via Ottawa Hospital boss urges staff to ‘be bold … go big’.
Perhaps this goes without saying, but iPad will be big in healthcare.
In terms of the iPad competing for customers who are considering a netbook, you know I am the wrong person to ask that. To me it is a no-brainer. iPad/Netbook, it is sort of 100 to zero. I can’t think of a single thing the netbook does well. iPad does so many things very, very well. I am already personally addicted to mine and couldn’t live without it.
via Apple Inc. F2Q10 (Qtr end 03/27/10) Earnings Call Transcript -- Seeking Alpha.
On the company's earnings call, Apple COO Tim Cook says the company is "shocked" by initial demand for the iPad. He also added, "I'm personally addicted to mine and couldn't live without it."
via Apple Blows Out Earnings Thanks To Huge iPhone Sales - Yahoo! Finance.
Speaking of iPad, the iPad is almost impossible to obtain in Boston area. By reservation only.
Research #Platforms #Technology
On why there is a ban on intermediate layers of software development on the iPhone OS.
But the reason isn’t technical. It’s partly business (Apple doesn’t want another company to control any important part of the iPhone platform), but it’s also in no small part grounded in aesthetics and the progress of the platform. Apple wants developers to do things the iPhone and iPad Way because they believe it will result in a better user experience and better designed apps. That’s an aesthetic, design-centered argument about how touch apps should be done. Apple has created tools customized to the iPhone and iPad; hell, they built a whole new touch-based operating system. They created a whole set of user interface metaphors that are supposed to be standard and system-wide, and they want developers to do things the new way not because Apple just loves power, but because they believe it’s necessary to force developers to think about the new world of touch-based computing correctly. All of this in service of giving users who are taking their first steps into touch-based computing a great experience.
Developers who want to write software for the iPhone have to write iPhone-like software. To do otherwise will hinder the progress of the platform.
Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.
Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May.
The iPhone represents nearly 90% of all non-laptop connections in Boingo’s airports. The iPad registered 5.4% of all device connections, while Android tallied 2.5%. Blackberry phones and iPod Touch MP3 players accounted for less than 2% each of total visits. Windows Mobile was less than 1%.
Remarkable statistics, through a narrow sampling. The above data represents all Wi-Fi enabled non-laptop devices in Boingo’s managed network, which includes 58 airports, the Washington State Ferries, and several sporting arenas and convention centers.
Apple said Thursday that it has shipped over 450,000 iPads since the device went on sale this past Saturday, spurring 3.5 million app downloads for the new tablet device by its earliest adopters.
via AppleInsider | Apple sells 450,000 iPads in 5 days, users download 3.5 million apps.
Jobs also updated with 600,000 downloads of iBooks. The first day sales of books was 250k, so it's keeping a bit above 1 book per device. First day apps was 1 million, so the app attach rate is now 7.8, well above the 3 from day one. Keep in mind that the iPhone attach rate grew to over 50 so it's early days to see how iPhone compares to iPad as an app magnet.