Apple have announced that 2 million iPads have been sold since its launch 60 days ago. Huge sales for a gadget that costs upward of £400, particularly when you compare it to the 3 months it took the iPhone to reach nearly 1.4m sales. A really strong start but does this indicate that it will last the distance?
So the iPad has finally reached our shores. The launch day queues on Regent Street demonstrate the huge demand for the new uber-gadget in the UK – but will you be buying one?
I’ve tested Apple’s latest innovation and, as you can read in my previous post Do ilove the iPad?, I really liked it as a piece of technology but I wasn’t convinced it had a place in my life.
Contrary to my caution and misgivings a good friend of mine insists he will shortly be buying an iPad. In doing so he helped me realise why for him, and for many other people, it has a purpose, albeit one that has a vague whiff of luxurious indulgence.
He owns an iPhone and an iMac (which is a desktop, not a laptop for the non-Apple addicted amongst you). His iPhone is perfect when on the move and his iMac is ideal when he needs a full on focus for browsing, uploading photos and his favourite passion – winning auctions and selling stuff on eBay. However if he wants to do a bit of causal browsing or Facebooking whilst cuddling up to his lovely better half on the sofa the iPad would be ideal – and much better than watching Come Dine with Me or Desperate Facelifts (or is it Housewives?). He can browse websites, watch wakeboarding videos on You Tube or even chat with me.
He doesn’t own a laptop so for him the iPad is iDeal (sorry, iReally must stop i-ing things). In fact, he used to own a laptop but it was overkill – too big, too power hungry, too heavy and too much technology for the job in hand – so he sold it to me. This is a perfect reason to own an iPad, but one that wont convince many laptop owners.
So why is the iPad so difficult to understand when compared to Apple’s other ground breaking products?
Let’s look back at the product that provides both the DNA and the hyperbole which has gifted the iPad such a fantastic start – the iPhone. It revolutionised the mobile phone, a category of gadget that was of course already very well established and based on clear and distinct needs that only a mobile phone could fulfill – mobile communication by voice and text. It brought incredible new features and usability to the party and kick started the mobile data revolution. It was a very different kind of mobile phone, but a mobile phone none the less.
Back in time the iPod created the MP3 player – it was a reinvention of the Walkman which had identified and served the need for listening to music on the go. The iPod just took it to a new level.
With the iPad Apple is trying to create a new category that sits between existing products rather than revolutionise an existing one. This is a brave strategy as you could end up creating a product that serves lots of needs adequately but excels at none of them, which can be dangerous according to my uni textbooks circa 1998 at least… Perhaps the thinking has moved on now?
If I could be bothered to create my own Venn diagram it would show that the iPad sits somewhere on the cross-over between the mobile phone, the netbook, the laptop and the desktop.
There’s an interesting article published by The Register which shares this opinion. The author, a long-term Apple fanboi, describes how after only 56 days he is already falling out of love with his iPad. He sites a few practical issues around the ergonomics of the device but in general his summary is that the iPad creates a new category of device, one that he doesn’t currently have a need for.
The iPad is a replacement for neither a netbook nor a notebook. It’s a different category of device entirely. However, in its current incarnation — although I do get some utility and entertainment out of it in specific usage scenarios — it’s in a category that is yet of little value to me. Perhaps not to you, either.
To succeed and find it’s place in millions more homes it will need to find some strong niche uses in which it beats its alternatives rather than simply ending up as a glorified digital photo frame or overgrown iPod Touch. Great iPad Apps and innovative accessories will be key to this and I’ll be watching very closely.
I may yet be an iPad owner but for now I may well invest in other luxurious indulgences.
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