This reminds me of the initial opinion of the telephone 100+ years ago: nice toy, but it has no practical business purpose.
Report: The iPad won’t go mass market anytime soon
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Re: Report: The iPad won’t go mass market anytime soon
#22The iPod isn't trying to go mass-market by exposing a focus group for a short time. It's trying to go mass-market by exposing a minority of vocal earlyvangelists and having them show people why it's useful.
So far it's working really, really well. The question is just whether they can keep it up -- if the use cases continue to be interesting and compelling to, say, 10% of the population rather than just 1% of it.
Still too early to tell.
Re: Report: The iPad won’t go mass market anytime soon
#23I recently went to work at a local cafe for a few hours over the weekend. It's a cafe that is well situated for people to grab coffee and a snack, and then sit down to get some work done. What was striking to me was that I saw no fewer than three people pop open their iPads and work for a few hours. And I'm not in the Valley. To add to this, on my last business flight last week, I noticed two middle-aged businesspeop…
I thought the same thing. For mother's day I got my 79 year old mother an iPad, and so far she really loves it. I don't think I've ever seen her this excited about a gadget. While I was at my parent's place for mother's day, I got a chance to talk to my other siblings, who called. Turns out my older sister also bought one and loves it. My mom and sister spent most of the call talking about it.
These anecdotes remind me of the videos & articles of young children, teens, and grandparents (and pets) using the iPad. They are definitely interesting examples of possible early majority[1] members adopting this technology - though perhaps it's more telling to look at the buyers of the technology (who are probably early adopters) than the recipients of it.
My own experience in a suburban area of Southern California is that I have yet to see someone using an iPad. That doesn't mean it's a failure anymore than seeing it in a cafe mean it's a success, of course.
I think more time has to pass, and more data needs to be collected, before anyone can declare the iPad a true success or failure with the mass market.