Apple iPads Targeting Netbooks, Not Notebooks
10/03/2010 10:12:00 AM
kenmouse
, Posted in
While the Apple iPad may not be cannibalizing the notebook PC market, the usage patterns of iPad owners are a "dagger at the heart of the usage model for netbooks," an NPD analyst reported Friday.NPD, which tracks retail sales of U.S. products, said in a report that only 13 percent of iPad owners purchased an iPad instead of a PC, while 24 percent substituted the purchase of an e-book reader for the iPad tablet. Nielsen has also constructed its own profile of iPad owners.
And, not surprisingly, iPad customers are more likely to use Apple products, NPD's report found - 48 percent of iPad owners own a Mac desktop or notebook, and 53 percent of iPad owners own a Windows desktop. The latter number is significant, as 75 percent of total householders, including those who do not own iPads, own a Windows desktop, NPD found.
The question of whether the iPad, and tablets in general, have begun taking sales away from typical PCs and netbooks has been a persistent question since the iPad's launch. Wall Street analysts have raised the issue repeatedly in quarterly conference call, with executives from Intel, for example, being asked about the tablet's impact on nearly every quarterly conference call.
"I haven't changed my view on tablets in the last three or four months since the launch of the iPad," Intel chief financial officer Stacy Smith said during the company's second-quarter earnings call. "I think they are an additive category to the market, much like we saw net books being additive. Netbooks in fact had a higher potential to cannibalize and they didn't. I don't see tablets cannibalizing the PC market.
While NPD found that tablets may not be affecting consumer purchases of notebooks, the way in which those consumers use the iPads directly competes with netbooks, report author Stephen Baker wrote in a blog post.
"Overall, as one might expect, the top three things consumers are doing with their iPads during that time are surfing the web, doing email, and playing games (and this is precisely why these devices pose a long-term threat to the notebook/netbook/handheld market)," Baker wrote. "But there are nuances within the different consumers that make the demise of other devices not quite as inevitable."
"For example, while those standard activities are done in similar proportion among initial buyers and latecomers, the initial buyers are much more likely to be interacting with more advanced multimedia features than their late buying counterparts. Early adopters were 44 percent more likely to watch YouTube videos, 50 percent more likely to watch movies, 60 percent more likely to watch TV shows, and 38 percent more likely to be reading e-books," he added. "That type of iPad usage behavior is a dagger at the heart of the usage model for netbooks and secondary notebook computers."
"Watching video on a device like this has always been a personal activity, and since 20 percent of users' time with the iPad was spent with it in bed, only slightly less than the 25 percent of time consumers spent with their iPad in a stationary surface mode, it is obvious that the iPad form factor makes people feel warm and cuddly," Baker concluded.
Apple iPad owners were "very satisfied" with their purchase, Baker wrote, identifying the device's weight, Wi-Fi capabilities, and e-readr capability as their most favorite characteristics.
And what do iPad owners want that Apple hasn't included? USB ports, followed by printing and multitasking capabilities; the latter two should be addressed in the next iOS upgrade to the iPad, Baker said. Meanwhile, if a Goldman report is to believed, the next version of the iPad wil include a mini-USB port as well.
According to the survey, iPad owners couldn't really find any common feature that they felt was extraneous; they named the tablet's ability to play back videos and serve as an e-reader, but no one complaint topped the list. Baker did not identify all of the items on the list, but said that an unidentified hardware feature came in seventh, evidence that Apple made good choices when deciding the iPad's feature set.
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