There have been a lot of new disruptive technologies that have seemingly come out of nowhere and revolutionized entire industries.  These types of disruptive products often catch people by surprise, and so people often think there is some mystery to how they become successful.  This mysteriousness apparently allows consumers (and apparently even seasoned analysts) to check their brains at the door and treat business like religion and put blind faith in Steve Jobs as if he were the Messiah. I will admit, there is a lot of mystery as to what makes a brand and product cool.  Apple is very good at that, but cool alone is not enough to make a truly revolutionary product …neither the iPod, nor the iPhone were successful merely because they were cool.

Products need to meet real or perceived needs for consumers; solve a pain, frustration, great inconvenience or other problem; and/or provide a more economical way accessing a service or provide an economic justification.  A quick look back at the iPod, the iTunes store or the iPhone will demonstrate that each of these products nailed most if not all of these criteria.

Prior to the iPod, there was a very large established market for portable music access, Walkman type products were pervasive. The inconvenience and customer frustration around these devices were also very well established.  For instance, if you wanted variety you had to change the cd, which meant that you had to carry a bunch of CD’s and over time they got scratched.  I could go on and on, but the point is that consumer demand for portable music was established, and the inconvenience and frustration around portable music access was well known. This led to the success of the iPod

Combined with the benefits of the iPod, the iTunes store provided a host of other benefits, consumers could more easily and more affordably gain access to the music they wanted. They no longer had to go to the inconvenience of going to the store to buy a cd or buy an entire cd to get the two or three songs they actually wanted.

Finally the iPhone also met these criteria.  There was an already established market for iPods and cellphones, a strong utility value of the applications, and a established desire and rapidly growing market for smart-phones, which was fueled by widespread availability of supporting technologies such as 3G wireless.  The iPhone was not cheap, but it did combine convenience factors with economic justification.

For example, consumers desired to carry an iPod and a cellphone, which was both inconvenient and provided economic justification.  They could solve the inconvenience of carrying two devices and utilize the budget they had already allocated towards the iPod and Cellphone.  The iPhone wasn’t necessarily a cheap or economically thrifty decision, as luxury products don’t need to be cheap, but they have to provide a strong utility value to become mass market. 

Take for example Starbucks vs. Ben & Jerry’s. Starbucks is basically Ben and Jerry’s with and excuse. Nobody needs a $6, 600 calorie coffee, and nobody would go to Ben & Jerry’s every single morning.  Starbucks is no better for health than ice cream, but it provides a utility value which allows people to justify it.  Mercedes Benz is another example.  If they made a small personal jet, they would not antcipate it to be a mass market product.  Even though it is cool, the average consumer just doesn’t need it.  People buy Mercedes autos them because it provides a strong utility value. Consumers can justify the additional expense only because the foundational utility value.

So this begs the question what is the strong utility value of the iPad. What economic justification does it provide?  What problem or pain point does it solve? Lets look at what the iPad does:

Portable music? Sorry, I already have an iPod or iPhone meeting this need better than the iPad could, because they are more portable. The iPad does nothing to add value to the portable music experience. It is actually worse for this because of its size, and is yet another device to synchronize and maintain.

How about Portable video? surely the larger screen that is so highly touted has to bring benefit here, right?  To answer this, I will examine another important question: What are the actual usage cases for portable video?  In the house? I can’t confirm this but I doubt there is a big demand here.  Each of us already have TV’s all over the house that do the job better than the iPad.  What about on-the-go?  This is only my perception, but it appears to me that portable and mobile video growth is largely fueled by times when people need to kill downtime.  When I am waiting at the doctors office, I pull out my phone.  If I am sitting on the bus, I pull out my phone. I am not planning on lugging an iPad with me to the doctors office or on other various errands in case I have downtime to kill. I am not saying there aren’t use cases for the iPad, certainly there are.  People who fly a lot or ride public transportation for long periods daily, for example.  But these use cases are not enough to make the iPad more than a niche product.

What about using the iPad as an internet access appliance or computer replacement?  The iPad also fails here.  Most internet and computing applications require a good amount of input/output (AKA a real keyboard.)  It is much easier to type on a smartphone than an iPad. I could take my flatscreen monitor and lay it flat on my desk if that were even remotely comfortable, but I don’t.  I am sure if anybody actually enjoyed the experience our keyboards would be "soft" already.

The target market for the iPad already has access to computers that do the job better when they are at home.  When they are mobile, the more demanding tier of the market for mobile computing already own notebooks or laptops that can do the job better. For everyone else smartphones do the job better because they are more portable.  Also, the bandwidth limitations of 3G limit the more meaningful internet experience that a larger device can provide.  (By saying larger device I don’t mean the iPad though because that is already limited beyond repair by not having good I/O capabilities.)

Another thing that prevents the iPad from being a meaningful computing device is that it may be a little before its time. If complimentary technologies such as voice recognition, 4G and sensor networks that would allow Pranav Mistry style computer-physical world interaction were available today, the iPad would be a great form factor.

How about as an e-reader? This is one area where the iPad may not totally miss the mark. The coming revolution in print media is analogous to the way the iPod and iTunes store disrupted the music industry. Some day relatively soon, most of us will be reading our books on some electronic device. The question is which device? The iPad is a convenient form factor as far as size and weight, but I do not see it as being the iPod of e-readers. First it does not have e-ink, which is a very important feature to the avid readers that are the largest consumers in the e-reader market today. Granted there are a lot of benefits to using a standard display over e-ink, but that argument goes both ways. I do not know what type of device will ultimately be the favorite among e-readers, but I suspect the market is too far along for any single device or manufacturer to sweep the market with an e-reader the way that the iPod did with music.

So overall, in my opinion, the iPad is a cesspool of mediocrity. Certainly it will be a successful product by some standard, but to anticipate iPod or iPhone volume of sales is absolutely ridiculous. It will be a toy for die-hard apple enthusiasts and a gift for the affluent person that already has everything else.

However, I do believe however that the iPad will be very successful in one area, and that is helping to popularize tablet features and sell other more useful tablets.

As I mentioned earlier, a device needs a utility value and an economic justification, both of which are lacking in the iPad. Consumers are however willing to pay extra for cool features on a device that has a strong utility value. Soon more and more notebooks (like the Lenovo U1 or S10-3t) will offer 90+% of the iPad features plus the utility value of the notebook PC that the consumer was already planning on buying anyway. I anticipate my next laptop that my work pays for may be a hybrid notebook/tablet, so thanks in advance iPad for helping me get the PC I’ve been wanting!