I’ve been running around gleefully, telling everyone who’s willing to listen that iPad users buy more online and gosh darn it – it must be the devices fault! Well . . . sadly . . . this may not be true. If you look at my previous post, you’ll see that average iPad user is NOT your average online shopper; specifically the demographics where they compare iPad owners to the average general population in the US.
- 51% of iPad owners are college grads as opposed to 28% of the average US citizen
- 62% of iPad owners have full-time jobs compared to 44%
- 50% of iPad owners earn over $100k as opposed to 11.5%
(Some more great stats here.)
Some retailers like Wine Shopper have claimed they have twice as many conversions from iPad customers on the iPad. There is no doubt that many app and web interfaces that I’ve seen for the iPad have made the shopping experience much more compelling and yet the stats around iPad commerce may simply be a matter of economic realities.
Back in August 2009, @robcapps of Wired Magazine, wrote the article entitled The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine and in this, Capps points out that the economy is heading to opposite ends of the spectrum. On one end, we have simple and cheap and on the other we have expensive and elegant. (Think Google and Apple.) No more big middle. (Dell beware.) With respect to the tablet market, it may end up being the Kindle and the iPad and that’s about it. The Kindle appealing to those that aren’t the 1% and iPads for those that have the means. We’ll see. For now it’s safe to say that the iPad will continue to dominate the tablet market, if not in volume, in revenue just as the iPhone does with the smartphone marketing (With only 25% of the smartphone market in the US, Apple generates 51% of the revenue.)
I’m curious to see what the consumer behavior is, once this market has matured.
