Sales of the Apple iPad are booming. The recipe for the tablet's success could contain some important lessons for laptop makers, says Jason Hiner.
In the second quarter of 2010, Apple sold 3.3 million iPads. In fact, it was the tablet device's first quarter on the market, yet it still outsold MacBook laptops by about 800,000 units. Sales of the two products together lifted Apple from seventh in the world notebook market to third.
At the same time, the other top five notebook vendors experienced slower sales growth, which suggests the iPad has cut into their market. Whether the iPad will be able to sustain these numbers will be one of the most interesting trends in the second half of the year.
Nevertheless, the iPad has already sold enough units to alarm laptop makers and nearly all of them are already working on competing tablets, in most cases powered by Google's Android operating system.
Laptop makers should also look at the factors behind the iPad's popularity and consider how some of those characteristics could be incorporated into notebooks.
1. Battery life
When Apple announced the iPad's technical specs and claimed 10 hours of battery life, I rolled my eyes. Published battery life numbers rarely stand up in the real world. But the iPad actually exceeded expectations. I've easily obtained 11 to 12 hours of battery life from my iPad, and others have reported the same thing.
That level of battery performance is important for professionals because it frees them from having to charge the device for an entire working day. Several business users I know say battery life was their primary reason for choosing the iPad.
2. Instant-on
You can click the iPad's power button and it is instantly ready to pull up a web page, calendar or email. Compare that experience with dragging your laptop into a conference room, waiting about 30 seconds to boot, logging in and then waiting again until the operating system is ready.
You may not want to fire up your laptop at the beginning of a meeting because you might appear inattentive or distracted. But if something comes up and you want to access information, you want it instantaneously without a break in the flow of the conversation or a delay that may make you look unprepared.
Some laptops can accomplish something similar by quickly leaving a sleep state when you open the lid, but this facility often causes problems with wireless networking and other basic functionality, and tends not to be as quick as the iPad.
3. Centralised software
The feature that made the iPad infinitely more useful and versatile is its massive choice of third-party applications. This software is available in a central repository, the Apple App Store, which also handles all updates for iPad apps.
That helpful arrangement contrasts with the complicated and confusing process of having to get software preloaded on your computer, buying it shrink-wrapped, or downloading it. Then nearly all the programs have their own...
