“Prior to the iPod, Apple was a niche computer company, targeting the high-end graphics design industry, and with barely a slight prayer to achieve 3% market share. Apple sneaked in under the noses of the hardware giants of corporate IT and introduced the little unassuming iPod,” Darcy Travlos writes for Forbes. “Through the universal appeal of music, Apple was able to introduce the world to its intuitive and “delightful” user experience and its elegant tactile hip designs. Once Apple created iTunes and extended the ease of using the device to the ease of buying, organizing and sharing one’s music, Apple dominated the ‘MP3′ player category, and does to this day, nine years after the iTunes came on the scene… Hardware without the associated software and user experience only got [other companies] so far, and that ‘so far’ was sharing the 17% of the market that Apple did not own.”

“In March 2012, Apple introduced the iPad and it became the fastest adopted consumer electronics product in history. Its revenues totaled $12.4B in over its first year on the market, and grew 131% to $28.6B. It took the iPhone 3.5 years to achieve what the iPad did in two,” Travlos writes. “The iPhone has “only” 24% market share. The iPod and the iPad each has over 65% market share. The iPad demand characteristics are far more similar to the iPod and suggest that the iPad, like the iPod, will be able to sustain over two-thirds of its market.”

Unfortunately, Travlos goes on to erroneously claim that “the iPad, like the iPod, is for content consumption,” but there is still some good information in the full article here.

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