Tuesday, April 19, 2011
72% of iPad users do not own an iPhone
Today I bumped into a very interesting report from ComScore on iPad users. In particular, there is one finding that jumped out at me: less than 30% of iPad users have an iPhone (27.3%, to be precise). 17.5% own a BlackBerry, the rest have an Android or something else.
It is interesting because it means that the Apple silo solution (MobileMe + iTunes) will not work for 72% of iPad users. When Apple announces their digital locker cloud solution (I am still betting it is by WWDC in June), they will leave all of them behind, scrambling for a solution to sync their phone with their tablet.
If you have an Android device and you cannot sync it to your iPad, then the Apple solution will be meaningless for you. You would better be served by someone who can go across devices (wink wink ;-)
On the other side, this puts even more pressure on Apple to have such a cloud solution. If you bought your iPad after your smartphone (likely) and you are looking at buying a new smartphone (very likely, you change mobile device every 18 months) then you might be attracted to an iPhone more than any other device. Now that you have an iPad (and you love it), you are more likely to ditch your BlackBerry for an iPhone, because Apple allows you to sync them transparently.
The other option, of course, is ditching your iPad for a BlackBerry PlayBook or an Android Tablet, but the iPad has such a lead in the tablet market - and I feel people will change tablet not as fast as they change mobile phone - that I see this as a 2012/2013 option. Not this year.
Bottom line:
- there is a huge market for syncing devices across platforms and the iPad is making this very visible (72% is a pretty big share...)
- there is a huge opportunity for Apple to use the iPad to drive iPhone sales, like they need more :-)
Posted by Fabrizio Capobianco at 14:18
12 Comments:
jackr said...
Your "more likely to ditch your BlackBerry" reasoning sounds very likely, since it's easy to assume that most of these users had their BBs before their iPad.
But that seems considerably less certain for the Android phone users, given Android's more recent debut, and rapid growth. "Android phone + iPad" users more likely chose their smartphone when they already had the iPad, don't you think? And are apparently unmoved by their inability to sync. Which doesn't suggest anything very good either for Apple's continuing interest in dominating the smartphone market, or for cloud sync as a broad service class.
Comment Posted at 14:44
Fabrizio said...
Yes, the BlackBerry story makes sense, but if you look at the full analysis you will see that BlackBerry owners are less likely to own an iPad, compared to anyone else. That would lead to hope for RIM they will go with a PlayBook... Or at least that they have been waiting for the Playbook to decide if they want to stick with BlackBerries or jump to a different platform.
On Android, I would not be so sure. The Droid campaign is now 18 months old... Lots of Android have been sold since. There is plenty of Android users with an iPad (me being one ;-)
Cheers,
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 14:53
I am going to ditch my Nexus One. But so far I am still tempted with the "openness" (read hackable) of the Android vs iOS.
Comment Posted at 19:54
I chose my Ipad 2 after I chose my Android phone.
The reason being the things that I cannot stand with iphone, i don't need it in ipad (annoying notifications are turned off) , or not as much problem in a larger screen (no word wrap in browser, no swype)
So I can tolerate ipad 2 while waiting for android tablet space to mature because tablet is for consumption and phone is for utility.
So no way I am going to iphone and lose all the customization and functions i get with my android phone.
Comment Posted at 20:03
Tonio said...
A very interesting observation, thank you.
Apple "simply" needs to do something as nice (from a user's perspective) as DropBox but a platform standard. This certainly seems doable, but the question is whether they'll actually do it. The alternative would be to do something that contributes to lock-in, but if it's not amazingly good it will make some people (e.g. Android/iPad users like you) inclined to leave the Apple sphere altogether and App developers to continue to work around Apple's limitations (e.g. using DropBox).
Comment Posted at 20:40
I'm in an outlier, but I am unlikely to buy an iPhone simply because of the contractual commitments and outrageous charges to run an iPhone (or nearly any other smartphone) on a monthly basis. I think a better method of selling iPhones to iPad customers is to break the current carrier pricing scheme. If you have an iPad 3G and pay $30/month for data and why get an iPhone with a large upfront cost (relative to iPad) and a mandatory data plan? The only thing the iPad is missing is a phone. Using a flip phone or other subsidized pricing (think Blackberry where the employer subsidizes the cost) device may be a better use of your money.
Comment Posted at 08:02
I'm using iPad (and iPod) with Google and not with Mobilme. Everything was working fine for me (my PC is using thunderbird, my Mac iCal, all connected with Google Calendar). My only problem is that we start to connected our official calendar with Funambol and I've not found anything to connect Google Calendar to our Funambol server. Is there a way to do it? Am I going to have the same problem as on MyFunambol: all repeated event lost the end date of repeatition...
Comment Posted at 04:09
Fabrizio said...
Hi Patrick, there is an import Google Calendar in myFUNAMBOL. I am not sure it is what you are looking for, but maybe it is.
W.r.t. to the other issue, I would recommend you connect to the help site and make sure you try http://help.funambol.com
Cheers,
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 08:36
Hi Fabrizio. My point is about your allusion on the role of funambol. For our case, funambol is here to connect our official calendar (on a special database) and other device. As I have different device (iPod Touch, iPad, PC Win with thunderbird, Mac with iCal), nor Funambol nor Apple MobilMe will work. All my device shared perfectly a calendar through Google Calendar.
If I was not obliged to enter through funambol, I will never consider it:
- iPod and iPad, synchronisation only for contact and I need to start it, it's not automatic. I need a transparent sync for calendar, with Google Agenda it works
- Thunderbird client: not working for me for the moment. I'm still working on it but it seems to work the first time (liste of event present on calendar of thunderbird) and stop working after
- iCal client: with all my first problem, I don't want to test it...
For the moment, for the agenda, my best universal calendar cloud is Google Calendar. Even if I decide to buy an androïd phone I'm ready on this side. I've not start to test Google contact so I can't say if it work well.
Funambol for what I've tested is not a solution. All the solution that look to work (Memotoo, SheduledWorld) seems to use Funambol with SyncML to open to Google Agenda.
That's why I was wondering if Funambol can sync with Google Calendar: the import in myFunambol is faulty and even it's just import, not sync. And no this answer is not on help.funambol.com ;-)
Comment Posted at 10:06
Fabrizio said...
Thanks Patrick for your feedback. I agree Google Calendar is a good product, although for me it is a bit too Googly ;-) and the rest of the stuff is not there (contact sync is a mess, pictures to Picasa is complicated, there is nothing for notes or video or files...). I like one place where to have every data type and across devices. Funambol is not perfect but works well with my daily combination of Android, Mac, iPad and infrequent use of BlackBerry, Symbian, Outlook and iPhone. Can be better, of course and I know the guys are working hard on it!
Comment Posted at 10:10
savvytel said...
yes you are right many iPad users user uses BlackBerry as her phon need
Comment Posted at 09:16
Tamara said...
This is definitely a very good point! What's exciting is the bottom line: that there is a huge opportunity for syncing devices across platforms. Yet, the problem that could lie within this opportunity is capital. And even if all these devices were able to be synced to one another, most companies don't seem to want that to happen.
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