Tag Archives: Bumptop

iPad Bet Revisited: I was wrong (sort of).

Posted on
1

It’s always been a peculiarity of prediction making that we frequently hear the boasting over accurate guesses but rarely hear of the admission of (more frequent) bad bets. I thought I’d start the New Year (I intended to write this post last week but was distracted) by acknowledging a bad bet in my own blog going back a couple years. Back in October 2009, my longtime friend Brad Kay posted on his blog how he believed the combination of iPad and Bumptop would “forever change the computing experience as we know it”. You can view the exchange on his blog here.

I pounced on the statement for a few reasons. One, those kind of grandiose statements are always suspect to me. They roll off the tongue easily but often without  definition or context. I took issue with Brad’s statement on two fronts:

What does it mean to ‘forever change the computing experience as we know it’?

Change it how? Would we all be using iPads in two years? What percentage of the population needs to own iPads and use them a lot to constitute ‘changing the computing experience as we know it’? The statement sounded suspiciously like ‘paradigm shift’ talk and I found that hard to believe given the two-year event horizon. Paradigms don’t shift, they drift. Change happens slower than our sensationalistic media would lead us to believe.

For what it’s worth, I still stand by this point, but the more important piece is what I wasn’t seeing at the time. That brings me to the second issue I had with Brad’s prognostication.

What is the functional role of the iPad in a world of iPhones, laptops and desktop PCs?

I had trouble understanding what the iPad was going to be used for. Like many other nay-sayers at the time, I was trying to understand where the iPad fit for those of us who had an iPhone and a laptop. In several blog posts I tried to imagine how people would do much of anything productive on the iPad. I argued that most folks would not give up their laptop as a work tool. Conversely, in terms of checking email, visiting Facebook, watching YouTube and tweeting, my iPhone seemed sufficient. Why would I elect to lug around yet another device in my already heavy satchel?

And that’s were I was mistaken. I was assuming two things. First, that it was a zero-sum choice and second that productivity was the driving force behind acquiring an iPad. What I was missing was that the iPad, unlike any device before it, fits in a novel modern need set – one that has never existed before because we didn’t have the surrounding backbone and opportunities to warrant it. That need set is of the small task producer-consumer role we all play in varying degrees. In our multitasking lifestyle we now are rarely ever in a purely consumptive or purely productive mode. Instead we do a little of each which is a relatively new behavior pattern for us. We post to Facebook while watching TV and we check and write emails while reading magazines. We flit from production to consumption and back many times each day as we dart from small task to small task and short burst of content to short burst of content.

The other piece I wasn’t getting at the time was the important role of the app developers in defining the iPad’s utility. The device itself didn’t really need a purpose so long as it was sexy and desirable (it was and is) and the developer community could imagine uses for it. Developers have certainly seen uses of the iPad that I’m sure Apple didn’t anticipate. Instead Apple built the device with hooks that allowed it to crowdsource uses. And unlike tablets in the past which were made with productivity in mind, Apple focused on consumption foremost leaving productivity to the app developers to dream up.

In hindsight, Steve Job’s description of the Pad as ‘magical’ was spot on. With magic, no one knows exactly what’s going to happen. The delight in magic is that it is surprising – exactly the joy the iPad delivers to owners who find uses for it they never expected.

I finally got an iPad2 this year (I skipped the first version) and have fallen in love with it. I use it for simple tasks and simple consumption. It doesn’t replace any other device I have, and I suppose in a pinch it is something I could live without, but it has changed the way I experience computing and I’m guessing it has done so for many other owners too. It isn’t in enough hands to be considered paradigm shifting in my opinion. Once you’re away from urban commuters the sightings of iPads drop precipitously, but its heading in that direction and if prices drop as usual, eventually iPads and their like will find their way into more classrooms, offices and homes.

So while today tablets are a long way from being the dominant form factor for digital experience, they are a consideration on the minds of anyone making anything in the digital space from new products, to new marketing, to new tools, to new operational procedures in business, to new entertainment distribution systems, and on and on and on. In that sense, its influence is certainly changing the computing experience as we know it.

So Brad Kay, I owe you a beer. You were right.

That said, the other half of your prediction – that Bumptop thing – not as much traction on that front. Maybe we can buy each other a beer?

Quantifying A Paradigm Shift

Posted on
9

For some months now I have had a friendly sparring session going on with my friend Brad. Last October, Brad posted to his blog a piece on iPad and Bumptop that I took issue with. My issue – to be clear – was less with the eventual outcome than with the timeframe. As followers of this blog know, I take a Now Not New outlook on technology and believe that despite the hyperbole and headline writing, the rate of adoption of technology is not quite as fast as advertised.

Clay Shirky wisely measures cultural revolutions (which I’m equating with the popular term ‘paradigm shift’) not by technologies but by enough people modifying their behavior because of them. I do not believe Apple’s iPad, or any tablet device for that matter, can possibly ‘change the computing experience as we know it’ in two years – which is the line Brad drew in the sand.

In a past post, I made note of the actual rate of MP3 player adoption into mainstream culture, noting that while it seemed that suddenly everyone had one, in truth the technology had taken nearly a decade to achieve the current ubiquity it enjoyed (which, incidentally is still less than half the population). Was this game changing? Absolutely. Did it happen overnight or even within two years? Not at all. Paradigms don’t shift, they drift and that presents opportunities and a mandate for calm, level-headed thinking.

Numbers talk.
Back to iPad. Brad playfully swatted my proverbial hornets nest when he Tweeted at me that at 2MM sales, he was ahead of his own schedule in terms of his prophecy.

I decided to do some digging to build my argument:

Apple has sold 2MM iPads worldwide, mostly in America. For arguments sake, let’s attribute ALL of the sales to America.

According to one source, the population of North America was approx. 340,831,831 in 2009*.

(*Its worth noting the U.S. census numbers for the U.S. are lower but that only 72% of people participated in the census in the first place.)

Working from the same first set of numbers above, 259,561,000 of this 341MM were internet users – or 76.2% of the population. That means 1 in 4 people weren’t even using the Internet yet which as an aside somewhat surprised me.

Attributing ALL iPad sales to North America, the 2,000,000 iPads sold are in the hands of approximately 0.58% of the North American population. That’s just a hair over a half of a percentage point. So yes, iPad sold faster than iPhone, and that’s a neat short term stat, but within the perspective of the internet-using population we’re talking fractions of a percentage point here.

As an interesting aside (thanks to my friend Jim for pointing this out) when the government went to switch from analog to digital TV in 2009 anywhere from two million to six million U.S. homes still had rabbit ears on their set top. Ask a techie and 2MM in terms of an iPad is a paradigm changing mass. 2MM in terms of legacy rabbit ears is a fringe minority. Subjectivity is a funny thing.

Ok, for argument’s sake, let’s peg a ‘paradigm shift’ at perceptual ubiquity in the marketplace. Per this study MP3 players enjoy a 44% market penetration in 2010. They feel pretty ubiquitous right? They’ve changed entire industries after all and it seems everyone owns one so I’m going to use 44% for now (we can revise later).

Let’s assume Apple iPad sales will continue at pace moving forward, even though some people are beginning to back away from this bullish outlook. I’m feeling generous, so if Apple sold 2MM iPad units in two months let’s give them 1MM in sales per month in perpetuity. That’s fairly liberal I think as the early adopters’ enthusiasm is being assumed as ongoing and applicable to everyone.

By this figure, to be in the hands of 44% of the North American population (150MM people), thereby equating with the iPod in terms of game-changing impact for a significant proportion of the population, Apple will have to sell iPads, at 1MM units/month, for the next twelve and a half years.

Unfair to put the burden solely on Apple when Samsung, HP and Dell are all working up tablets? Okay, let’s double the sales figures per month for tablets. Even at 2MM units per month you’re still looking at 6 years to reach 44% of the population.

Driving the point back to my friend Brad’s two-year plan; to put a tablet in the hands of 44% of the population in two years, you’d need to sell 6.2MM units per month beginning on day one. That’s very aggressive in a new category wherein the market need being met is poorly articulated at this point.

To those arguing with my subjective benchmark of 44% pegged to the MP3 player, this brings us to the definition of paradigm change. First, MP3 players are more appropriate than say iPhone/smartphones because the latter has even less market penetration. Second, the free (mis)use of phrases like ‘paradigm shift’ and ‘change the computing experience as we know it’  and the running-around-with-our-heads-cut-off  it creates is precisely what I am taking issue with.

To call something a paradigm shift, which is defined as a fundamental change in approach or an acceptance by a majority of a changed belief, attitude or way of doing things, it must impact the behavior of a larger population than the smart phone (currently about 10% of the marketplace) or iPad do. Not by a little… by a lot. By the definition of the word, even the MP3 player/44% example is not a valid basis.

By contrast, according to this nifty website there have been about 153,073,000 PCs sold in the world this year. That includes laptops, desktops, and notebooks but not handhelds. That’s a paradigm shift in process (that was at its early stage three decades ago). Smartphone and tablets are still at their early stage. Will they take three decades too? Probably not. But they won’t take two years either.

So why am I making such a big deal out of this?

Overcoming NYopia.
My point here is not that the iPad isn’t a successful product by business terms. Apple continues to impact the computer industry and the iPad will effect lasting change on computing. No arguments here. Even more encouraging is the fact that you don’t need to create paradigm-shifting technology to do quite well in business. Hell, the people who reshaped rubberbands, colored them and call them Sillybandz are making a fortune on a very old technology.

The important realization – I’ll say it again – is that paradigms drift, they don’t shift. This gives us time to think and consider. This gives us the ability to make plans, create a strategy and spend wisely. This means we need to take a collective deep breath and think about things a little more.

Yet any time a new technology hits the media hypemachine, businesses (from Wall St. on up) have a collective freakout. Reason goes out the window, everyone begins truncating thought and talking in superlatives. Worse, companies begin allocating a lot of resources and money based on these knee-jerk reactions fed by poorly contextualized information. You can call this jockeying for early-mover advantage but this doesn’t always work. You can shoot from the hip in the name of ‘experimentation’ if you want, but experimentation without a process for learning is wasteful. And yes some companies do these things and still come out on top. But that’s the would-be actors in Hollywood dynamic. For every Tom Cruise there’s 10,000 waiters working for $8.75/hour. Shouldn’t we want to improve our odds a little?

So Brad my sparring partner, I do not contest that tablet computing, like the mouse, modem and microchip, will have a lasting impact on the evolution of computing. I do not, however, believe that will be experienced by the vast majority of people within the next two years. I also believe that it is this vast majority of people that most companies do business with. It might make sense to spend some time looking at how they really live, act and engage with the world.

They say fortune favors the prepared mind. Part of preparation is looking ahead. The other part is keeping your head amid the exaggeration flying around.

Tableta Rosa: In a new category success may not require sales.

Posted on
2

Recently, I had a witty exchange  with my friend Brad on his blog (see comments section). Brad was marveling at Bumptop and a potential tablet device. He mentioned that this sexy new duo would ‘conquer the world’ and ‘change computing as we know it’. This, he said, would all happen within two years.

Not to be a buzzkill but here’s why it won’t and why even if it doesn’t, a new tablet might still be ‘successful’ for the company launching it first (probably Apple).

As ‘luck’ would have it, I had a chance to test tablet computing a little. About a month ago I broke the ulna bone in my forearm while practicing Aikido. With my mouse arm effectively out of commission I decided to resort to a stylus setup as I use my other arm for handwriting. I got access to a Wacom tablet - admittedly this is not the same as the highly anticipated tablet of the likes Apple is probably going to release. Still the Wacom device allowed me to experience working with a tablet of sorts day to day. As I did, some things became fairly clear.

Here’s the challenge to tablet computing as I see it:

To be practical, the tablet needs a keyboard-like data entry tool.
As someone who had trouble typing for the passed month, I’ve become acutely aware of just how much typing I do. Speech-recognition software is interesting (in my injured desperation I also tried it out) but it isn’t quite workplace practical yet. From the images (of dubious origin) of the Apple tablet online it seems Steve J and Co. have likely already anticipated the need for a keyboard-like interface and will include it in the device. Smart move but…

To be portable the tablet should not need a separate keyboard.
Speaking from experience; if you want to do anything more than watch videos, listen to music, surf the web, play games and possibly send short text messages (all things you can do on a smaller, cheaper, more portable smart phone), you’ll need a keyboard. However, a big part of the appeal of the tablet concept lies in the sleek simplicity of the device overall (few buttons, knobs, ports and keys) and its inherent portability. Otherwise, why not buy a laptop or desktop machine? Hauling peripherals around  isn’t going to work. So, the keyboard should be on the screen. But…

To have an ergonomically comfortable experience the keyboard will likely have to move off the screen.
Ergonomics is the big unaddressed hurdle in tablets. A tablet on a table or your lap puts the viewing screen perpendicular to the angle of your face 95% of your upright, waking existence. The tablet therefore forces the user to crane their neck in a way humans are not anatomically designed for. Stare down at your shoes for 45minutes. How’s your neck feeling?

Wacom knew this and built a stand onto the tablet I used. It made the device bulky, heavy and not especially portable but it was practical.

Conflicting needs for tablet computing.
So that’s the rub if tablets are to become consumer devices. To be portable, it should be an all-in-one device. To be practical and ergonomic it likely needs a separate keyboard for longer computing sessions. The obvious solution would be to build a folding tablet with two touchscreens. But that’s basically a laptop isn’t it?

Another option would be to use the tablet like a sub-laptop. Keep the working peripherals at your workstation and tote the tablet from place to place. So much for writing long blog posts at Starbucks though.

(It’s worth mentioning here that the consumer marketplace isn’t the only one and tablets may have numerous business uses in warehouses, sales floors, bank branches, etc.)

A bump in the road for BumpTop.
This brings me to BumpTop. Admittedly it is very sexy and feels like we’re inching toward the interfaces from the movie Minority Report. However, 3D space is tricky for people to work with. To date 3D in computing has not been especially successful with the computing masses (think VRML or SecondLife). While 3D is cool in video games, experientially playing Halo is a lot different than writing a business report or compiling research. Interestingly most of BumpTops examples are more entertainment oriented – cropping photos and such. That’s fine if your hardware device is an entertainment toy like an iPod Touch. But when serious use is called for, you’re back at the keyboard dilemma.

What is often forgotten by techy pioneers is just exactly how technologically literate the average computer user really is (and as importantly – feels like committing the time to learn to be). There’s a reason Web 2.0 has has seen a simplification, not complication, of website interfaces. To make sharing- the backbone of the social web – accessible to all, websites need to be navigable by all, and that means K.I.S.S. Similarly videogames, even two-fisted Wii games, have a very limited feature set during game play, nothing near the complexity of needs a device must meet to do common work computing.

For my money, I’m not convinced 3D navigation of computer files offers any benefits aside from sexiness and novelty in its current state. When we’re a little closer to Minority Report, then I might change my opinion but don’t count on that in two years.

So will a tablets be successful? Well, first define what ‘successful’ means.
Like Netbooks, the earliest adopters and technophiles will glom onto tablets, snap them up, show them off and talk about them like the Second Coming. Also like Netbooks, their ‘real life’ utility will be limited and their mass adoption modest at best unless the product developers find ways to make the tablet ergonomically friendly and generally more practical while also keeping it portable. For the low four-figure pricetag they’re talking about, if the tablet is just a big iPhone it will be a rich geek’s toy not an indispensable piece of hardware. Maybe that’s a profitable marketplace, I don’t know.

Interestingly a fabric-based, flexible and wireless keyboard might span the portability-practicality gap. If you could fold the keyboard into the device and take it out only when you need it, then that $1000 XL iPod Touch you just bought might make a business write-off on your tax return afterall.

Or, perhaps the tablet will be smaller and more Kindle sized – a size ‘L’ iPod Touch which retails at what current iPhones do now. That’s the consumer gadget marketplace and it can be profitable for sure. Then again, 82% of mobile phone users are still using the simpler, cheaper ‘feature phones’ and haven’t even gotten a smart phone yet. Makes that 2-year world conquest still harder to believe.

Of course the reality could be that like fax machines, the whole tablet concept is an interim advancement whose shelf life will be limited.

Does the tablet need to sell to be ‘successful’?
I’ve often thought Apple puts out some new products (the Air laptop, the old Cube, the Newton way back when) less to actually sell them en mass than to keep their street cred as the innovator in hardware. To the degree an Apple tablet is just a big iPhone/iPod Touch, perhaps development wasn’t super expensive and the street-cred earned will help Apple retain the clout it needs to dominate the market in mindshare. After all, even if you can’t afford a $1000 toy, you can get the iPod touch – tiny, old school version – for a few hundred bucks and soak up the sexiness of being an Apple touchscreen dude.

From a marketing perspective that would essentially be product development as brand advertising – something that put Apple on the map with the inclusion of a mouse on home PCs (c1984) and again with the colorful iMac bubble computers (c1990s). In fact, the earliest iPods had this effect and in general the whole iPod/iPhone category has gotten a lot of people rethinking their commitment to the Wintel platform in general for their home computers.

Given the cost, reach and efficacy of a year-long national TV campaign, developing the tablet was probably cheaper and will be more effective as an advertisement for Apple the brand.

Maybe that’s all the success the tablet needs to make it worthwhile.