Another kind of “surge”
According to Bernstein Research analyst, Colin McGranahan, “consumers” are adopting the iPad faster than any other consumer electronics device, including the iPhone and the DVD player. (I usually put “consumers” in quotes, because they are the actual “producers” of the ecosystem, as well. A lot of the other folks are just “parasites.” 
)
McGranahan says:
“By any account, the iPad is a runaway success of unprecedented proportion.”
The original iPhone sold at the rate of 1 million units/quarter, the DVD player at 350,000 units/quarter, and the iPad… at 4.5 million units/quarter, currently. If the current rate continues, the iPad could become the FOURTH largest consumer electronics category, as a $9 billion/year business, behind only TVs, smartphones, and laptops, and ahead of game consoles and regular (dumb ) cell phones. (Note added November 1, 2010: I refuse to call regular [dumb] cell phones “POS phones” as one young high school lady recently did.” )
When I first wrote about the iPad (“iPad and the Third Law“) in January of this year, I asked the rhetorical question, “Is the iPad sufficiently advanced (to be a technology that is indistinguishable from magic, under Arthur C. Clarke‘s “Third Law“)? I answered my question, “We shall see.” (I’ve found that it is easiest to answer your OWN questions…. )
In that blog entry, I noted some of the shortcomings of the device (some of which “fell” to software development rather quickly), some of which still exist. I also noted the “stumbling around” of investors who were (it seems obvious now) trying to make sense of a “game-changing” technology.
Although I try hard to be optimistic, I have seen so much mind-numbing human stupidity, even in high tech, that the weight of my experience can sometimes hold me down. Now, people are voting with their hard-earned currencies, and the wisdom of the “consumers” seems to be prevailing over the opinions of the “nay-sayers” among the elite technology pundits.
Sometimes, my faith in humanity is well-placed (and my skepticism of “experts” is well-justified).
-Bill at
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