The iPad is Revolutionary, as even a “Normie” can see
The first iPad units are shipping and we’re surely headed for a deluge of opinions from far and wide about what the iPad means as a product and how successful it will be. And I’m not just talking about opinions from the geek tech rags which have covered these topics ad nauseum already. Real mainstream America wants to know – as evidenced by several of my friends who have asked for an opinion on Apple’s latest product creation.
My friends ask me even though I’m a regular guy, albeit one who happens to dabble in the murky waters of technology early adoption. But I do play in the technology world, placing me squarely in the proverbial middle of the Chris Dixon Techie vs. Normal Venn diagram – I’d call myself a “Normie”. It makes me a potentially dangerous source of technology prognostication – or perhaps an important one. Because as Dixon states, “Techies are enthusiastic evangelists and can therefore give you lots of free marketing. Normals, on the other hand, are what you need to create a large company.” And his further assertion – “techies are only occasionally good predictors of which tech products normals will like.”
In my explanation to my even more Normal friends, I keep coming back to the assertion that the iPad will be a transformative product – not necessarily because of the bells and whistles of iPad version 1.0. But because of a broader shift we are in towards full on mobile computing, with anytime anywhere consumption occurring with regularity not just for techies, but for Normals all over the developed world. In this sense, the iPad is a revolutionary product, rather than just an evolutionary one.
To explain what I mean I’ll step back only a few years to the birth of the iPhone in the US (I will choose to focus only domestically at the moment because I have even less expertise in knowing the international wireless market; I fully realize, however, that parts of Asia were and are ahead from a pure mobile functionality standpoint). Prior to the iPhone the mobile device had already evolved to the point where it was relatively normal for individuals to want and need access to email and (crappy) internet access in a mobile device. But this evolution was over a long period of time. It’s hard to remember because the world has changed so rapidly since, but as recently as Q3 2005, the mobile market was still massively not smartphones – of the ~825 million phones sold in 2005, only 45-55 million were smartphones. By Q3 2006, only about 5% of the total phone market was smartphones.
Over the next few years, the market evolved, with the Blackberry gaining in market share in early 2007 due in large part to the massive adoption in the business community. RIMM was able to do 1-2 things, namely corporate email, and do them really well and rode this evolutionary wave in mobile for an upward sloping market share.
Source: CNN/Money
Of course, the bigger story here was the launch of the iPhone, and specifically the 2nd generation iPhone 3G which took smartphone adoption to the next level. The iPhone was the revolutionary product which, along with the evolutionary technology progress which had already been made, took smartphones to the next level. In short, the iPhone revolutionized the market from a techie/business power user market to a mainstream consumer must-have. And this meant good things for all smartphone makers – according to Forrester, by the end of 2009 smartphones made up 17% of total US wireless subscriptions, up from 11% the year before. Within the smartphone market, RIMM (Blackberry) market share at year end was 20%, compared to 14% for Apple (and growing at a faster rate).
Stepping away from the statistics for a second, what we’re seeing is the iPhone driving a massive market shift towards mass quantities of consumers who want and are getting access to mobile phones with data/wireless/internet capabilities. In start-up parlance – a smartphone is no longer just a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. And not just in for the early adopter, big-city kids riding the subway cars of Brooklyn, but for the very normal Mom in middle class suburbia who is finishing up her “new every two” contract and going for the iPhone or Blackberry at upgrade.
This is the second time we’ve seen Apple step in with a product which capitalizes on the evolutionary technology and market forces inherent in the way technology is moving – first with the iPod and now with the iPhone. With this sort of product/market credibility, Apple has built up immense brand respect, loyalty and even love, to the point where mere Normals are willing to accept that maybe the iPad really is not just the next step, but the revolutionary inflection point for mobile computing. Apple has the world’s attention, and they’re taking advantage of it.
I’m not convinced that the final shape this will take will look like the iPad 1.0 we know today. As prices come down and technology evolves, we will see many entrants into the compact, flat, mobile, not-a-phone-but-not-a-laptop device world which will allow us to connect, consume and compute anywhere at anytime. But we will all look back to the iPad as the granddaddy of them all, and wonder how we ever lived without “it” - whatever “it” actually ends up looking like.
