US Tablet Buyers Are Multi-PC Consumers by Sarah Rotman Epps for Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

August 19, 2010 US Tablet Buyers Are Multi-PC Consumers by Sarah Rotman Epps for Consumer Product Strategy Professionals Making Leaders Successful Every Day For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals August 19, 2010 US Tablet Buyers Are Multi-PC Consumers Product Strategists Must Position PCs And Peripherals Within A Multidevice Lifestyle by Sarah Rotman Epps with J.P. Gownder and Laura Wiramihardja EXECUTIVE SummarY The success of the Apple iPad has created a halo around tablets in general: Consumers are interested in these devices, even if they’re confused about what they actually are. US online consumers who own or intend to buy iPads and other tablets fit a typical early-adopter profile, and their characteristics have implications for product strategists designing tablets to compete with the iPad. They own multiple PCs and connected devices; they’re voracious media consumers; and they have an affinity for other Apple products but aren’t exclusively “Apple-ites.” Product strategists should use these insights both to create would-be iPad competitors and to position other devices and peripherals as complementary to tablets in a multi-PC ecosystem. tabLE OF CONTENts NOTES & RESOURCES 2 The iPad Has Kicked Off Tablet Mania Forrester used data from its North American 3 Contrary To Popular Belief, Grandma Isn’t Technographics® surveys in this report. Buying The iPad Related Research Documents 7 iPad Buyers Aren’t Exclusively Apple-Ites “Updated Q3 2010: The US Consumer PC Market RECOMMENDatIONS In 2015” 11 Pitch Tablets To The Multidevice Consumer August 4, 2010 12 Supplemental Material “The Windows 7 Tablet Imperative” May 27, 2010 “Apple’s iPad Is A New Kind Of PC” May 14, 2010 © 2010, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com. 2 US Tablet Buyers Are Multi-PC Consumers For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals THE ipad HAS KICKED OFF tabLet MANIA Apple’s iPad has been an unqualified success: The company announced in its Q3 2010 earnings call that it had sold 3.27 million iPads worldwide from its launch on April 3 to the end of Apple’s fiscal quarter on June 26. The iPad has become a major consumer electronics product category — unto itself — within one single quarter. Consumer product strategists at competing firms are gearing up to respond. HP has said it plans to release a consumer-focused webOS tablet as well as an enterprise-focused Windows 7 tablet.1 Dell has released an Android OS 5-inch Streak tablet phone in the UK and plans a US release of this and other products later this year.2 Toshiba, which debuted the DynaPad nearly two decades ago, plans to release a “Smart Pad” in October 2010.3 Rumors abound regarding 7-inch Android tablets from Acer and Samsung, and Lenovo has announced that it will release “LePad” before the end of 2010.4 Tablets are also attracting new entrants to the consumer device market: Cisco Systems has announced a 7-inch Android tablet, the Cisco Cius, optimized for videoconferencing in an enterprise context.5 Demand-side interest is growing along with supplier investment: Even though the iPad is the only widely available tablet PC on the market today, tablets have entered consumer consciousness in a very short time frame. Forrester’s North American Technographics data reveals: · A rapid increase in consumer awareness of the iPad. In online surveys of 4,091 and 3,990 US online consumers fielded in May and June 2010, respectively, the percentage of US online consumers who said that they’d never heard of the Apple iPad before the survey dropped from 17% in May to only 5% in June.6 For context, three years after the Amazon Kindle’s release (another entirely new type of product), 25% of US online consumers in the same survey said they’d never heard of a Kindle. · Growing ownership and intention to buy. In our June survey, 1.3%, or 2.5 million US online consumers, reported already owning an Apple iPad. An additional 3.8% (7.4 million) say they intend to buy one.7 This iPad interest is fueled by the social influence of its buyers, who are 20% more likely to use Facebook, 40% more likely to use Twitter, and have more friends and followers than US online consumers overall.8 · Confusion about the tablet category in general. At the same time that consumers are tuning in to the iPad, they’re getting excited about tablets in general — even if they don’t know exactly what they are. Only 10% of consumers in our June survey said that they’d heard of tablets other than the iPad. But when asked to name them in an open-ended response question, there were a lot of don’t know/can’t remember responses. We also got responses that reflected confusion about the category, such as iPhone, Kindle, or BlackBerry — as well as a few responses of obscure tablets, such as ARCHOS and joojoo, and tablets that have been hyped in the media but are not yet for sale like HP or HP Slate, which had the most write-ins with 23 responses. August 19, 2010 © 2010, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited US Tablet Buyers Are Multi-PC Consumers 3 For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals · Vast enthusiasm, however, about buying tablets. Despite confusion about what tablets are, 14%, or 27 million US online consumers, say they intend to buy some kind of tablet in the next 12 months (see Figure 1). In contrast, only 4% of US online consumers say they intend to buy a desktop, 8% say they want to buy a netbook, and 13% say they want to buy a laptop. While the confusion that surrounds tablets means that we don’t think that this many consumers will actually buy a tablet, we do think that this data is encouraging for Apple’s would-be tablet competitors: There’s interest in the category that goes beyond the iPad. Figure 1 Consumers Want To Buy A Tablet, Even Though They Don’t Know What They Are “Which of the following devices do you own, and which do you intend to buy in the next 12 months?” Desktop 81% computer 4% Laptop/notebook 60% computer 13% Own Netbook (small laptop, 8% e.g., ASUS Eee PC, Dell Inspiron Mini, Intend to buy in the HP Mini-Note) 8% next 12 months eBook reader/eReader 4% Tablet buyers are more likely (dedicated reading device, than all US online consumers 11% e.g., Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader) to want to buy a desktop or netbook. Tablet computer 1.9% (touchscreen multimedia device, e.g., Apple iPad) 14% Base: 3,990 US online consumers (multiple responses accepted) Source: North American Technographics® Consumer Technology Online Benchmark Recontact Survey, Q2 2010 (US) 57068 Source: Forrester Research, Inc. coNtrarY to popULar beLieF, GraNdma ISN’T BUYING the ipad Product strategists who are developing tablets want to know who is buying and who intends to buy these devices. People love to share anecdotes about two-year-old children and 90-year-old grandmothers using the iPad.9 But, the reality is that consumers who own or are planning to buy the iPad and other tablets fit an extreme early-adopter profile: They are high-earning, educated, likely to travel for business, and more likely to be male (see Figure 2). Prospective tablet buyers have several characteristics that have important implications for product design and strategy. In particular, prospective tablet buyers: · Own multiple PCs, including netbooks. On average, consumers who own or intend to buy an iPad (“iPad buyers”) have 3.6 PCs at home, compared with 3.0 PCs for consumers who own or © 2010, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 19, 2010 4 US Tablet Buyers Are Multi-PC Consumers For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals intend to buy a tablet (“tablet buyers”) and 2.3 for all US online consumers. Of particular note is the rate of netbook ownership: 24% of iPad buyers already own a netbook, compared with 16% of tablet buyers and 8% of all US online consumers. It’s noteworthy that owning or intending to buy an iPad actually corresponds with being more likely to also want to buy a desktop — 9% of iPad buyers say they intend to buy a desktop in the next year (twice the rate of all US online consumers); they also still want to buy netbooks at more than twice the rate of the general US online population, at 18% for iPad buyers versus 8% overall. · Live in an ecosystem of connected devices. Tablets take their place in a crowded household of devices (see Figure 3). A whopping 69% of iPad buyers and 57% of tablet buyers also own a latest-generation game console — an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or Nintendo Wii — compared with 37% of all US online consumers. iPad buyers are four times as likely as US online consumers to own a connected TV (9% versus 2%). Connectedness extends beyond living- room entertainment to peripherals like wireless speakers; 24% of iPad buyers own them versus 6% of all US online consumers. iPad and tablet buyers are more likely to store data in the cloud, too: 33% of iPad buyers say they store files in their email inbox and 12% say they use an online storage service like Windows Live SkyDrive or MobileMe — versus 24% and 4%, respectively, of all US online consumers.10 · Consume media like it’s air.

Load more