i don’t know if it is just an attempt to jump on the ipad bandwagon or if forrester research actually tries to compete with the likes of nyt tech writer pogue or the fine folks over at gizmodo. but to my big surprise i today saw a forrester bannered piece on paidcontent.org, written by a sarah rotman epps and she told us about how the ipad is a great device, but targeted a the wrong consumer. now, first off, i have no idea how someone can target the wrong consumer … consumer is consumer, money is money. i assume she means audience. but well let’s ignore that. what is more interesting is that she doesn’t seem to remember the iphone. ok, so main argument is that the ipad is a great device which ultimately has too little to offer to technophiles and is too ahead of the actual audience of the more luddite sort … after all would they move their info into the cloud?
The bottom line: To sell this device to more than just Apple acolytes, Apple will need to teach consumers not just a new way of using this particular device, but an entirely new way of computing. Apple will need to teach consumers to be less dependent on peripherals and more dependent on the cloud. To crave experiences that are less open-ended and more curated. At the same time, Apple will teach consumers to expect more from computing—more visual pleasure, more touch.
the problem with this view completely ignores apple’s and general consumer’s adoption history.
- the cloud arguments sounds just like the complaint the tech press had when apple got rid of the floppy drive back in the ’90s. in the end consumers didn’t care
- people didn’t think the ipod would attract any mainstream consumers … well it did
- and i can’t even think of all the complaints the tech press had of the iphone … from the lack of a real keyboard to no multi-tasking … in the end it didn’t matter
on top of all of this apple now has millions of iphone and ipod touch users for whom the touch interface is nothing new anymore. and who are used to move data from the iphone cloud to other devices they use. i assume too that forrester has adoption data of the iphone and will likely find that a lot of those iphone adopters these days are no longer applings but rather very mainstream consumers and judging from the jd powers surveys they love their iphones … if they had a problem on how to use the device they would have voiced their thoughts by now … but all we can hear is silence.
rotman epps is right in that this is a consumer device as well as an apple fan boy device. but one group she misses are corporate travel bees. all of us who are on the road a lot and don’t want to carry around a ton of devices for (laptop, mp3 player, ereader …) the ipad will be great. you can use it from reading and listening to music to finalizing your presentation decks and actually presenting it …