“For many people, Apple’s iPad is a suitable PC replacement, and Apple is likely to see millions of iPad sales as PC substitutes. But Apple’s real opportunity — and probably why Apple thinks that the tablet market will eventually become bigger than the PC market — is for people to buy and use iPads where there weren’t PCs before,” Dan Frommer writes for SplatF.
“Case in point: This MasterCard ‘lounge’ in the American Airlines terminal at JFK airport — a roped-off area for MasterCard cardholders to sit on comfortable couches and chairs while they’re waiting for planes during the holiday travel season,” Frommer writes. “There are eight iPads set up for people to use. (Plus two iPads for the staff.) Four of the iPads are set up on swing-arms for people to use on the couches, including a selection of pre-installed apps. Four more are set up at a bench with stools.”
Frommer writes, “In theory, some or all of these could have been PC laptops. But they aren’t. The iPad seems to make more sense in this case: It’s easy to use, easy to clean, easy to install, and easy to maintain. It looks cool, and has name-brand awareness. And it’s inexpensive: The $500 base unit is just fine for this purpose, and Apple may even offer large-scale ‘enterprise’ discounts… So there’s ten iPads sold where there probably wouldn’t have been ten PCs sold.”
Read more in the full article, which includes a photo of the MasterCard lounge, here.
MacDailyNews Take: We see the tablet market as a huge market, and we could not be happier with our position in it. And we’ve got some fantastic things in the pipeline. And after selling 40 million in the first 18 months, which is more than our wildest dreams were and selling 3 out of every 4, I think we’ve got a fairly good handle on what to do next. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, October 18, 2011
Read the article… sounds like the iPads installed had been “neutered” so that they weren’t actually much good for anything that required the internet or Safari… lame use of a great piece of gear… way to go Mastercard..
I’m starting to see some of this. Our local bakery replaced a printed book of custom cakes with an iPad displaying pictures of cakes. I asked them about this. They said it was cheaper and faster than printing photos and the touch interface was easy for customers. In Cleveland we visited a restaurant that handed iPads as menus. It was nice. You could click on the wine list and get more information than would be easily presented in a printed menu.
Applications like this, especially with dynamic font sizing, are a godsend to those who would have trouble reading information they would like to know, but was in too small a font for them, just like the extra details on a wine menu. 🙂
Baby’s crib. Start ’em young!
My business partner’s 5 year old used an iPad at school and for homework and a couple of hours a day on days off for play.
Recently helped an Engineering firm present a bound, color report to a client, over 300 pages with appendices (fold outs of drawings, that kind of thing). Professional printing and binding would be over $500 just for one copy. I proposed we just put the report on an iPad, give it to the client, and say, “Here’s your report. By the way, keep the device.” They didn’t bite, but in the very near future, this will be more and more the norm.
95% of the world’s population does NOT own a computer. Selling one in 200 of this market increases the computer pie by 10%, or stated another way, about 30,000,000 units. That’s 30 million on top of whatever iPad’s cannibalize from the 170,000,000 laptops sold each year.
100 million iPads per year is not hard to fathom.
Majority of the population doesn’t have food on their plate yet considering buying a iPad will be suicidal.
True .
Not all non-computer users are “untapped”.
They’ll end up being used in unique ways like mentioned in the article no doubt, but Apple’s real benefit will come with end users who have avoided computers altogether (the elderly).
Two cases I’m seeing unfold at the moment…
My Grandmother, who is 82. She can’t move around all that easily, so getting to a desk, or even using a laptop really isn’t an option for her. Power cables, where it would sit on her lap, using a trackpad of some kind… Not gonna happen. An iPad is PERFECT for her, along with it’s UI. She’s never used a normal computer anyway, and she won’t learn it now.
My Uncle who is 79. He is totally mobile, and is well versed in computers (Windows). He is retired and spends six months a year in a pimped out RV cruising the USA. He’s been doing that for years, but he’s really starting to complain about setting up his laptop, with the charger and mouse all the time. He gave my iPad a test drive (straight to his email and a few websites) and was nodding his head the whole time.
Both will have iPads by years end. I’ll get my first email from my Grandma? Wow!