James McQuivey, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research: It is an iPad world right now. 34% of the US population will have a tablet by 2016. That’s 112.5 million tablets. No other device in the history of consumer electronics has achieved such a high penetration in such a short time.
Future will not be made only of tablets. Now have 35 million ereaders and 30 plus million say they are thinking about getting one. Over 70 million iPads out there. Kinnect for Xbox 360 has sold 22 million devices. Means that Microsoft can move into the market.
Apple two years to sell 1 million iPods when they first came out. Given the fast sales of current devices it shows how the environment of change has come about. Raidly converging technologies accelerate the delivery of consumer benefits, but it is the software-delivered services that makes the power of those technologies easy to access. And consumers and believing it. The end result is a platform promise – a three-way consipiracy by device makers, service provders and consumers.
It is not about the “next tablet” to come out. It is the platform power that is important and those who have platform power will be the leader. Of the top ten uses for devices, the tablet is the only device they ever surveyed that users use to do eight out of ten of the uses on a regular basis.
The only tablets that can compete with the iPad in the future are those that have a platform promise. Google is working on a platform promise, so is Facebook and Disney.
There are other ways to tackle the iPad. From the TV side its the Xbox 360 and there are 70 million of them out there. Content will always be king, but the platform is the new throne – and the platform has the power to crown a new king at any time.
“There are other ways to tackle the iPad. From the TV side its the Xbox 360 and there are 70 million of them out there. ”
An Xbox in a tablet ? Duh ………
There is more to “not only iPad”:
1. In countries less developed iPad is equivalent to 2-5 Android tablets. It’s easy to choose cheaper to start with tablets/mobile experience.
2. There are still more iPhones and Android phones around and people always have them in their pocket. Tablets – not so much.
3. After first tablet boom now “platform thing” is getting more and more important. People choose Kindle for books, not hardware. iPad for apps, not hardware.