So my prediction from six and a half weeks ago came through, with a couple of days to spare. iPad has surpassed iPod in web traffic. It took only two months and two million units, compared to almost 3 years and about 40 million iPod touches out there. That means iPads use the web roughly 20 times as much as iPod touches.
Also, not only has iPad more than doubled Android 2.1’s share, it’s now past all Android OS’s combined. .
via Deagol’s AAPL Model: iPad web usage passes iPod.
Good call.
Giving Android the green light:
In addition, for the time being, Microsoft will not offer new Windows versions to support non-Intel architectures that are targeting tablet PC development, noted Guggenheimer.
The formation of a market segment for a new product category necessitates the existence of a supporting ecosystem made up of a complete industry supply chain, Guggenheimer emphasized. He cited the netbook market as an example; units were selling well initially and people believed that the market was going to be established as a new segment, but recently market growth has slowed down considerably, Guggenheimer pointed out.
via Whether tablet PCs can become market segment is still uncertain, says Microsoft VP.
I remember when Microsoft used to be paranoid.
According to The State of Mobile Apps | Nielsen Wire 21% of American wireless subscribers have a smartphone at Q4 2009, up from 19% in the previous quarter and significantly higher than the 14% at the end of 2008.
A previous Comscore survey showed US smartphone penetration at about 17%.
If we were to blend the data to a rough estimate, I would say it’s fair to assume 20% penetration. The total number of subscribers in the US is about 234 million, which makes for 46.8 million smartphone users.
This still leaves 80% or 187.2 million non-smartphone users.
The share gain of 6%/yr. means another 1.2 million Americans are switching into a smartphone every month. Another decade and the non-smartphone market will simply be gone.
With AT&T lowering the barriers of entry with data plan pricing and with other operators matching, don’t be surprised if it happens sooner.
As saturation begins around 50% to 60% penetration, price competition will intensify. That takes the tipping point to about 2013.
We see the next flood of new portable color touchscreens headed to market in the next 18 months as a game changer. It will be the opportunity that content producers like Time Inc. have been waiting for to reestablish value for quality digital content. It’s argued that it will be impossible to get consumers to pay for digital content since they’ve grown up getting everything for free. We disagree.
The tablet restores something we lost when we went to the Web. Our readers can once again literally touch our content while still having that familiar “lean back” experience of a magazine. In real time, they can link in instead of linking out to the rest of the story on Time.com.
The advertising can be so good it can become content itself. It can help you evaluate products. And when you’ve made your decision it can help to find you a place to buy them.
As more and more hardware manufacturers come in with these e-readers there is just huge demand for our product, for our video product, for my print product—it’ll all be combined. We think very healthy business models will be coming out of it. We’ll be making more money in those businesses than we’ve been making with our traditional dot-coms.
People are paying. We know people will pay for it … it’s a business model that is just really very delicious.
via Time Inc. Is Really, Really Excited About Tablets « The Biz Blog – Forbes.com.
Using the politically correct terms “tablet” or “touchscreen” or “e-readers” to describe the iPad like it was PC for music companies to talk about “MP3 players” when referring to iPods.
I’m assuming we’re supposed to compare this approach to the freer alternatives such as community gardens and city parks. Ignoring for a moment the fact that these gardens are also regulated by serious restrictions on what one can and can’t do, it still puzzles me that the “walled garden” is presented as an obviously undesirable structure.
Aren’t the benefits of a closed, carefully managed garden clearly visible? The experience is controlled, so it tells a story – one which may not emerge from a democratic, anything-goes process or do you think this sort of slow and deliberate story would emerge in a busy American city in the year 2010? Charging for admission means that the place can be maintained, improved, and marketed. There are downsides to this, of course — maybe the management makes boneheaded decisions now and then. Maybe you think that vine maple would look better a little to the left — maybe you’re even right.
via The Walled Garden – Neven Mrgans tumbl.
A walled garden is great as long as the gardener is an enlightened genius. I can tell you that when operators tried to make walled internets for their handsets, the result was an atrocity.
It’s understandable why people recoil at the thought of a walled garden. But they shouldn’t. If it’s no good you can go somewhere else.
As Apple overtook Microsoft in market cap and as Steve Jobs reminisced about some recent history, I thought I’d reflect on some of the decisions that brought Apple to the pinnacle of technology companies. The criteria I used to select these is how improbable and hence courageous they were when taken and how much impact they have had on the industry. Since the impact of these decisions could not be felt for a long time, the courage required to act early is all the more remarkable.
At the time they were made, none of these decisions did anything to move the stock price or cause great rejoicing. In fact, in many cases the decisions were ridiculed by those who should know better. Yet each one became a massive pillar of the foundation of Apple as it is today. As you read through, think of the decisions that Apple competitors made or did not make in the same time frame.
Top 10 Apple technology decisions of the 2000 decade in reverse order: Continue reading “Why Apple is on top today: the top 10 technology decisions”
Japan’s very high demand led the sales outside of the country at five percent, but China and the UK were tied at four percent. Canada despite its proximity was just 3 percent of iPad traffic.
via AdMob: 38% of iPads already outside the US, ad SDK up | Electronista.
Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg sang Jobs praises for several minutes, before declaring: “His greatest accomplishment is going to be this tablet.”
“As Steve said last night, there is something indescribable about the connection,” Katzenberg said. “Our children are going to get educated on it. They are going to play on it. They are going to consume more media on that than any other (device).”
“The laptop is yesterday’s news,” he said.
via At D, all hail the iPad | Beyond Binary – CNET News.
Greatest accomplishment…to date.
Best Steve Jobs quote from D8
7:06 p.m. PDT: Is tablet eventually going to replace laptop, Walt asks.
7:07 p.m. PDT: Jobs: “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms.” Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.
7:07 p.m. PDT: “PCs are going to be like trucks”
7:07 p.m. PDT: “They are still going to be around…they are going to be one out of x people.”
via: CNET
iPad is a product competing along a new basis; that of convenience and simplicity. The PC vendors are motivated to serve their most demanding customers who expect loads of features and the highest specs. Most people who write about technology for a living will also side with the “truck drivers” because they “know more about transportation than anyone else”.
When you hear someone say that the iPad is just a toy or that it’s only for consumption and not creation, think about that professional truck driver’s bitterness at seeing cheap consumer vehicles cluttering up the roads, doing nothing but serving the unproductive whims of an uneducated population.
Steve Jobs On iAds:
[It’s to] make developers more money…. People are using apps way more than they are using search. So if you want to make developers more money, you’ve got to get the ads into apps. But the mobile ads we’ve got today rip you out of the app…” Apple has figured out a better way.
This is pretty much the same as his statement on the iPhone 4.0 launch: asymco | On a mobile device Search hasn’t happened.
Asymmetric Competition