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iPad Isn't "Killing" Netbook Sales, According To Paul Thurrott
mantis2009 writes "Paul Thurrott, the prolific technology analyst and Windows expert, reacts strongly to an article highlighted on Slashdot. Thurrott takes numbers from IDC and the Wall Street Journal, indicating that netbook sales have not in any meaningful way been affected by sales of Apple's tablet computer, the iPad. Money quote: '[N]etbooks and sub-12-inch machines will sell 45.6 million units in 2011 and 60.3 million in 2013. If I remember the numbers from 2009, they were 10 percent of all PCs, or about 30 million units. Explain again how the iPad will beat that. Please. Even the craziest iPad sales predictions are a small percentage of that.'"
Didn't they sell a million of them last month? That's about 25% of netbook sales (48million in a year would be about 4 million a month). That doesn't sound like a small fraction to me.
To be fair, though, the idea that sales were affected was based on asking people what they were going to buy, not what they already bought. People talk a lot of crap. So it's best to ignore what they say and concentrate on what they do. Not many people are going to not buy a netbook because of an iPad, because they satisfy different markets. Netbooks are great for people who want to throw a small pc in a bag and have access to the net, type emails etc on the go. iPads are great for..well...uh..say you wanted an expensive, easy to scratch laptop but wanted to have to hold it awkwardly all the time you were using it, didn't want to actually type anything on it etc. They're great for that, I guess.
If the growth rate drops off and is replaced by growth in iPads, how in the world is that not a takeover?
I believe most people would refer to that as market saturation. There is a finite number of people needing to purchase a new computer in a given period of time and the explosive growth of netbooks could very well be slowing now that a large percentage of everyone who wants to buy one has. Still, I think the entire debate is baseless because the two products (iPad and netbook) serve very different purposes. The iPad is best suited to enable the consumption of media (movies, music, web, ebooks, etc) whereas netbooks are most often used as simply small, inexpensive notebooks. Every person I know who owns a netbook uses it for work computing- Office, presentations, e-mail, scientific computing, I even use my old Eee 900 for editing and managing photos when I travel.
That's just as much conjecture as sales projections through interviews. I have only your analysis (which doesn't seem at all derived from a distaste of one product) to guide me in determining if netbooks and tablets are satisfying different markets. What if they do serve different roles but the act of purchasing one or the other is a revelatory moment about value of the "other" computer? If I buy an ipad maybe I'll discover I don't need a netbook and vice versa. We need to wait six months or so to get a real feel for the demand on ipads, but I wouldn't be surprised that a decent segment of the population only buys one.
Nope. Just have to have a growth rate smaller than the expansion of the market. For a very crude analogy, take the employment ratio in the united states (you can find it at bls.gov). The employment ratio can fall even if the economy doesn't shed jobs, because people are instantly entering the labor market. If job growth doesn't keep up with labor force grow, the employment ratio falls.
So let me get this straight, the argument here is that the iPad isnt effecting netbook sales because the projected number of netbooks to be sold in 2011 hasn't been changed in the last month ...
Seriously, someone fucking fire timothy, he hasn't posted anything that wasn't a blatent slashvertisment or flat out obviously wrong in at least 2 years.
Why don't we wait until someone gets some real sales numbers and there has been more than a month before we start talking about how its effecting the market.
I don't think the iPad is going to effect much either, but I don't try to back that up using sales PROJECTIONS made by people who aren't actually doing the selling. The WSJ must be pretty damn smart to predict the future with 0 input to base it on.
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Netbooks are great for people who want to throw a small pc in a bag and have access to the net, type emails etc on the go.
Correct.
iPads are great for people who want to throw a small pc in a bag and have access to the net, type emails etc on the go.
Sounds pretty accurate too.
Bah...the market overlap between netbooks and tablets (that would cause competition) is tiny. People who buy netbooks want a small laptop. People buy the iPad want an entertainment device. The iPad happens to be coming in ot the market at a point where it's becoming saturated with netbooks. The drop in demand in natural, and is unlikely to have anything to do with the iPad.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Netbooks are great for people who want to throw a small pc in a bag and have access to the net, type emails etc on the go.
Correct.
iPads are great for people who want to throw a small pc in a bag and have access to the net, type emails etc on the go.
Sounds pretty accurate too.
And pay double the price for doing it. No reasonable person would assert that a $500-$800 Ipad is competing against a $300 netbook. At that price it is competing against laptops. If anything I would expect sales of the low end Macbook to be cannibalized by this thing.
I for one will buy either a Tablet or a Netbook. Not an iPad though, a true Tablet, with LAN access to my files, Tethering, SD card, USB ports and video out. I'm holding out for all those Tablet pre-announcements, to see if one actually pans out.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Seriously? This guy has been so wrong on apple over the years that I think taking his opinion on apple or anything tech would be like believing exRaider Jamarcus Russell that he was doing well at QB.
seriously slashdot should have higher standards than Thurott
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Could you please provide a link to where these ARM based netbooks or Android tablets are being sold? Cheapest netbooks I've seen start at $400 CDN and functional tablets have been pretty much vapourware..
As a content creator, for me, the Ipad just doesn't cut it.
As a plumber, I can tell you that the iPad's not very useful for that, either.
Did you have a point?
I dropped 300 bucks for my netbook last year on a whim. I had a pretty burly laptop at the time...then the nVidia sli bug kicked in and fried my video cards. I had nothing else and I had another project come up, so I took my netbook in and used it for development (obviously hooked it up to a monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc.). Worked like a charm for me. And I do a lot of .NET development and SQL stuff, but that little Atom processor and the 2GB of RAM was plenty enough for my needs (and actually, I was able to catch a timing bug that I couldn't replicate on a higher end Win7 notebook, but I digress).
See, I can get actual WORK done on a netbook. I can do paperwork, make website edits, do a whole lot of other things without having to lug around (or pay for) a much more expensive high end laptop...and I don't see myself replacing that netbook with a bigger laptop anytime soon unless I'm stuck using higher end systems for a client. If I need to do something really high end, I use my desktop at home or whatever a client dumps on my desk for work purposes. Otherwise, the netbook is all I'd need...the only real reason I had my old laptop was for gaming, and I'm better off doing that on my desktop at home anyway.
The problem that a lot of folks have with understanding why tablets just aren't that much a threat to netbooks is that netbooks and tablets sate two different market segments. Tablets are fun, show-off things that you use to waste time (though just like netbooks, they really suck for gaming). But you can actually get work done on a netbook and a good one will cost you less, too. Sorry, tablet fans, but that's how it is. They may be super cool to you and you think that you paid 500 bucks for a great thing, but you know in your heart that you paid 500 bucks for a goof-off device.
Expect an iPad is not a "small pc", not even by the "I-am-a-Mac(not-a-PC)" standard set by those ridiculous Apple Ads. I don't consider a machine a PC (Personal Computer) if I don't really own it, i.e. if I am not able to legally install whatever software I want to and use its computing abilities to its fullest just because their manufacturer decided to intentionally cripple it.
I doubt it. The tablet market is going to become a very crowded space very shortly with several potential competitors who have been developing their products for much longer than Apple has.
While the iPad won't fail, it won't enjoy the same long-term success the iPhone has had.
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Seriously, who cares one way or the other? Tablets and netbooks aren't competing for the same niche. I couldn't care less about the Apple and MS fanboy back and forth between tablets and netbooks. They don't really compete for the same purposes. Realistically they could co-exist really well if the major players involved were a little more obsessed with making the customer happy than their shareholders.
Netbooks compete against laptops and desktops as a low cost, ultra-portable alternative. They're not very suitable for the things tablets are designed for, and tablets are not suitable for many of the things netbooks are designed for. The only product line the iPad could possibly put out of business is the Kindle and other e-readers. Maybe if PDAs were still around, they'd be competing in that market niche as well. But netbooks? No. Though a netbook with a detachable multitouch screen and proper online cloud support services (media store, cloud backup, etc.) might. But no, Jobs needed to start the whole brouhaha by thumping his chest about tablets being the end of netbooks.
Netbook sales were already leveling off. Looking at the sales figures, they have continued their downward growth trend that started months before the iPad was released. I have no idea how this is stretched into an iPad effect.
The iPad is best suited to enable the consumption of media (movies, music, web, ebooks, etc) whereas netbooks are most often used as simply small, inexpensive notebooks. Every person I know who owns a netbook uses it for work computing- Office, presentations, e-mail, scientific computing, I even use my old Eee 900 for editing and managing photos when I travel.
Currently the iPad is better suited to consumption.
But that's a software issue... all of the things you mention - presentations, editing documents, email, photo editing - those already work pretty well on an iPad, and in fact photo editing/review that you do on the road can be a lot better done with an iPad unless you are a heavy photoshop user. Over time, we'll see even better software to meet those needs.
I can actually type really fast using the onscreen keypad, but if you were replacing a small travel laptop many people could easily include a small bluetooth keyboard, like the kinds they have made for years now for other mobile devices. You wouldn't need to use it all the time but for more serious editing in a hotel room it might be nicer.
I say this all not to say if the iPad will or will not supplant netbooks, just to note that if you think of it as only a consumption device you are missing out on a lot of what it can do, and do well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe iPad sales are cutting into netbooks, maybe not. But what makes people think Apple can keep this up?
The MacBook Air looked like the granddaddy of netbooks, it was shiny and hot; and a year or two after its release, its just another expensive, light, and slow laptop for Mac users with too much cash.
The same is likely going to happen with iPads. Apple pushed the thing out the door quickly, but low-cost tablets have been in the pipeline for a couple of years, and you're likely going to see $200-$300 tablets with better specs than the iPad and no software restrictions this year.
Worked like a charm for me. And I do a lot of .NET development and SQL stuff... ....
The problem that a lot of folks have with understanding why tablets just aren't that much a threat to netbooks is that netbooks and tablets sate two different market segments.
And the problem with people that think the iPad lives in a different space is that they do not realize how few people need to do things like .NET development that cannot be done on an iPad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My thoughts exactly. Paul Thurrott is a well-known (and quite succesful) troll. He will bash anything Apple does, he will love anything Microsoft does and he's often not even subtle about it. He even manages to like the Kin phones and claim "most reviews are positive", while in fact every major tech website hates them. When reading something from the hand of Paul Thurrott, you quickly realize RDFs aren't Apple-exclusive.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
None of the linked products are competitors to the iPad or a typical netbook. With a 800x480 screen and puny single-core ARM they have specs equivalent to a high end phone - except that a phone can fit in a standard trouser pocket and make voice calls.
Show me a netbook that's projected to sell 10 million units and support a media and application infrastructure that will allow it's manufacturer to continually reap income from the device long after sale?
Thought not.
Come Christmas, the iPad will be *the* tech item to buy.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Wow! So I can have not-quite-the-same (since I can't for instance play my vast collection of xvid encoded TV shows) media experience on a $500 device as I could a $300 device if I buy some apps, adapters, and cables? And I can't do many of the other things a netbook can do?
Sign me up!
I find it funny that people get so emotional over someone else's choice in computers.
I also find it funny that only on Slashdot you can find people comparing computing devices that were engineer well enough to actually revive a basically dead touch tablet market, to pieces of crap thrown together at a Chinese assembly plant.
Let's use Slashdot's mandatory car metaphor as an example:
Sure we can all drive to work on a Vespa scooter, but I prefer to drive my Honda automobile. There is a tangible difference between having the capability to drive to work, and actually wanting to use the vehicle to drive to work. The same applies to computers.
Sure I can spend a lot of time figuring out how to get that $80-$190 off brand device to do what I want, or I can spend a little more money and get something useful like a $300-$400 Asus netbook or $400 - $800 Apple iPad.
That's not even taking reliability into consideration, I have yet found anything that is both really cheap and reliable. Face it the only thing those cheap pieces of crap found only on ebay are good at is to provide some flimsy evidence to a Slashdot poster so that they can say "See I can find something cheaper that technically could do something similar to that expensive computer you like so much!!"
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I am not able to legally install whatever software I want to and use its computing abilities to its fullest just because their manufacturer decided to intentionally cripple it.
What's that got to do with the iPad? There's no law against jailbreaking it.
Regardless, you're playing semantics. Whether you want to call it a "PC" or not is entirely irrelevant to the issue of the iPad's functionality. It serves as a computer you can toss into a bag to check your email, browse the web, etc. What you prefer to label it does not alter the actual functionality of the device in any way whatsoever.
That's simply not true.
First, newer netbook chipsets built within the last year should handle 720p just fine. The only thing holding it back on the web is Flash being a bloated pig, and if you have to use Flash, those videos won't play on the iPad anyway, making this a moot point. With the new Flash 10 betas, even recent netbooks should be able to handle 720p Flash videos.
Second, most tasks (word processing, web browsing, sending/receiving email, etc.) don't require much CPU power at all. A netbook should be able to handle those tasks with ease. Thus, they do a lot of things reasonably well. They just don't happen to be the things you care about.
Stop right there. The iPad is a cool device, but as a long-time Apple zealot, even I can't argue that it can do everything a netbook can do. I currently use a real laptop, but if I did have a netbook, I could still run Finale or Sibelius (clumsily); I could still run Apache, PHP, and a web browser to prototype a web site; I could still compile and debug software; I could still run Photoshop (slowly); and so on.
Eventually, the iPad will have equivalents for many of these tools, but they don't exist yet. Thus, at least for now, the right tool depends on what you want to do with it.
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Why do people buy laptops when they already own desktops? the answer: portability, portability and portability.
And the iPad doesn't offer that?
Different third-party apps, all non-free (and not only in the FSF)
There are both free gratis and free libre software on the App Store.
and wholly unsupported by the device manufacturer
I wasn't aware Toshiba supported Photoshop (as an example)?
And your 'adapter' solutions all fail at the single thing the iPad has for it: portability!
What? How big do you think these adapters are?
Unlike an iPad, you *can* run applications meant for PCs on a portable device.
Yeah, poorly.
And I guarantee you, every single game that runs slowly on a netbook won't run at all on an iPad, with many that'd run perfectly fine (ie, most Flash and indie games) *also* won't run at all on an iPad.
You can guarantee, for example, that Plants vs Zombies won't run on an iPad?
You're trying to twist "is wholly uncompatible with the software most people want to run" in an advantage of the iPad, and that's simply idiotic, sorry.
No, you're trying to pretend that if you can't run the same binary on an iPad as you can on your PC, then you can't perform the same task. That's simply idiotic, sorry.
I doubt it. The tablet market is going to become a very crowded space very shortly
HAHAHA.
Oh, you were serious? Two things. First, the "tablet market" was going to become very crowded months ago. Apple is the only company to actually deliver, which is key. MS Courier was just a concept rendering, and HP's Slate has hit a huge roadblock that was so bad that they ditched Windows 7 and bought Palm.
The second thing is that, yes, there will be plenty of tablets available, but how are they going to compete with the iPad? The tablet market that the iPad is going to be facing will be similar to the PMP market that the iPod faces. Yes, there will be plenty of other products, but it's highly unlikely they are going to do better than the iPad.
Of course, only time will tell, but to count on the usual suspects to somehow outdo Apple? Not a sound bet.
with several potential competitors who have been developing their products for much longer than Apple has.
Which makes it all the more pathetic that they have been caught with their pants down yet again.. iPod, iPhone, and now iPad.
Okay, the "correlation is not causation" loons have reached a new plateau of insanity. As far as i can tell there is neither correlation nor causation in the statistical sense involved here. There is an easily verified claim that the netbook market is currently larger than the iPad market, and there is an impossible to prove (except with the passage of time of course) but entirely reasonable belief that that will continue to be the case in the future. So where is the supposed correlation that is being incorrectly claimed to indicate a causation?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The problem is, most people pretty much think of the iPad as exactly what it *is*: a much bigger and bit more powerful iPhone.
My wife, who is unlike me straight right bang in the middle of the target group for the iPad, looks at an iPod Touch, and then she looks at an iPad, and she doesn't see the slightest similarity. To her, these are two completely unrelated devices. One is a music and video player that can also run games and show a web site on a useless tiny screen, the other is a web browsing and email computer that has lots of other applications, games on a big screen, video, and that also can play music. No similarity. None at all.
And you can argue with me all you like, if you tried to argue with her, she would just think you are being silly.
"With an iPad, you can not only do what netbooks can do but you also can download applications specifically tuned to the iPad for multitouch and within the processor and gfx chip limits giving you a better gaming experience than you could get with a netbook running games designed for a more powerful PC."
Wow. That's putting the best possible face on saying the iPad is limited to Apple's Application Store.
So....netbook sales are dropping?
Except that they aren't. What is dropping is the rate of growth in sales. Well what do you expect? Lots of people went out and bought one when they first came out. Now they have one. They don't need another one yet (netbooks have not been around for the standard life cycle of a computer).
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an ipad isn't a netbook. Why are morons trying to compare the two?
Netbooks sales are in freefall
The growth of netbook sales has slowed, but it's still positive growth. That means that netbook sales are still increasing. Not at all a "freefall".
It's not your reading comprehension skills that failed you since you understood exactly what the previous article intended for you to understand (read: you were misled). Instead, it was your critical thinking skills that failed you when you didn't pick up on the deception.
*sigh* back to work...
This. It would be foolish to assume that the iPad hasn't affected netbook sales SOMEWHAT, and may be responsible for the slowdown...but that slowdown was coming anyway. The "saturated market" theory makes a lot of sense.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people that bought an iPad originally intended to buy a netbook. That being said, even if every single iPad buyer had at one time been a potential netbook owner, that would account for a very small portion of overall netbook sales.
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Seems like a worthy market to be in. Isn't that actually the stated purpose of netbooks... providing a PC operating system in an ultraportable form factor?
No, it's a crappy market to be in. Very few people actually want an ultraportable PC. What they want is an ultraportable device. The fact that the most capable solution at the time was a miniature PC notebook doesn't mean that that is specifically what most people wanted. It's just all they had available.
Aside from that... the iPod Touch was really just Apple's (2nd) attempt at a Palm Pilot.
Newton predates Palm. So, Apple's first attempt was made years before the US Robotics Pilot?
It did pretty well
You could just stop there, because your "why" is just that "people are stupid". While I don't agree with your assessment, either way, nothing's changed in that regard between the iPod Touch launch and the iPad launch.
The iPad is a jumbo-sized Touch with a few nifty extras.
The same way a swimming pool is just a jumbo-sized bath tub.
Through the magic of advertising, Apple has made them seem attractive to a huge number of people, but the success so far has been pretty stunning, and there's a good chance the lustre will fade once early buyers realize it's too big to fit in a pocket and doesn't offer much that a smaller, less expensive, but otherwise virtually identical product with equal or greater sex appeal has had all along.
Again, you're projecting stupidity on other people's choices, and (regardless of the correctness of your opinion) somehow expect them to change. Ain't gonna happen.
Personally, I'm looking to see what the next generation of netbooks brings to the table. I'd much rather have the keyboard, and if somebody sells a model with 1080p HDMI out and an SSD at $500 I'm going to be a very happy camper.
Good for you. I hope they make what you want. But most people do not want what you want. You're a geek (or a nerd, or whatever you want to call it), and your intelligence appears (based on your surely unbiased assessment) to far exceed that of the average person. On what bizzaro world do you think that the needs of someone like you, technologically speaking, would be the norm?
My o' My. What venom I hear from the likes of those Apple Panboys. Did us Apple Fanboys sound like that back in the late 1990s when the whole PC industry was eating our lunch?
Wow!
More and more people are buying Apple products. They weren't sheeple or stupid idiots or people with money to burn and no brains when they weren't buying Apple products, and they aren't that now. These are willy consumers and see nice products at somewhat reasonable prices. Reasonable prices? A JooJoo tablet is the same price as an iPad. The WeTab (formally, the WePad) will be selling in Europe for $600. Remember the Zune? Came out at the same price as an iPod -- and the Zune was physically bigger, heavier and was brown. And, of course, there's the Adamo XPS which is just like the MacBook Air, but costs $500 more.
Looks like when companies build products to take on Apples' products, those products also take on Apple pricing too. You cannot build a 9" touch screen, well made tablet for under $500 and still make money. Even the HP Slate is going to sell for the same price as the iPad when it comes out in the end of July (running WebOS).
I don't know who this Paul is, but netbooks have been in the doldrums for a few months before the iPad, and sales have continued to drop since the iPad came out. There suppose to be 50,000,000 of them netbook suckers? He's an idiot.
The question is how other companies are viewing the iPad. Quite a few have quietly dropped working on up coming models, and instead are working on various tablet computers. Looks like these companies see the writing on the wall -- the netbook is pretty much dead.
And good riddance for netbooks too! Netbooks were money pits for most of these companies. You can't make money selling $300 netbooks. Heck, the Windows 7 license itself was close to $100. (Yes, I know: Linux is the answer. I use Linux too, but Linux based netbooks never sold very well. Linux is a nice kernel, and the GNU utilities are nice, but the Gnome and KDE desktops suck. Non-geeks hated them).
Nope, these companies see the writing on the wall: They're all coming on with tablets. HP's Slate will be coming on at the end of July running WebOS. Android tablets are in the works for Dell and other companies. They're not waiting around for ChromeOS which will be a disaster. Anything that'll run on ChromeOS will run on a iPhone OS or WebOS based tablet. Besides, the trend is people using web-based data in native apps. Look at all the Android and iPhone apps, and how many of them are simply apps that give you the same data you can get from the company's webpage? And, people are PAYING for that instead of using the free webpage. That should tell you something. It's the real reason why Flash is dead. Despite what Adobe thinks, nobody want to run an AIR app when they can run a native app instead.
And, all of these companies will sell their tablets for about $500 -- matching the iPad's price. Why? Because you can make money on a $500 tablet which is something you cannot do with a $300 netbook.
By the way, nothing I mentioned called netbooks worthless or that you were an idiot buying one. You bought them for a good reason and are probably pleased your bought one.
The problem is that netbook computers not profitable to build. And, that's their real downfall.
Yikes! Using a remote desktop solution might be okay for managing servers, but I can barely stand the performance of VNC from across my house at 802.11g speeds. I can't imagine the sheer torture of trying to use it for everyday tasks, much less connecting to a home computer served by a DSL connection over a 3G connection. That would make the slowest netbook on the market seem positively snappy by comparison even with SpeedStep locked at the slowest setting.
Also, you would have to:
I can understand the desire to have a larger screen, but... 17 inches? Are you serious? An iPad the size of the largest MacBook Pro? The whole point of iPad is that it is easier to carry around than a laptop....
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But of course, the original poster of the statistics was a dedicated Apple blog. There are vested interests everywhere but that doesn't justify bullshit statistics. Paul is right here, in this case. He calls out the bullshit statistics. And I assure you, the previous article that this one is referring to was because people are just too stupid to read graphs.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
And if you haven't had an iPad, you would probably have assumed a healthier position in a comfortable chair. And your wife wouldn't have had to learn to sleep with you doing weird things in bed.
In other words, it's quite likely that his arguments are more suited to general public than yours.
Regards,
Ruemere
iPads here are about 700-900 euro (depending on size, including ~75 import tax and shipping from the US), compared to 100-200 euro for netbooks. Are iPads that much cheaper in the states, or are the prices for netbooks just really high?
Or could it be, perhaps, that comparing these two is like comparing an office machine with a gaming machine?
> Isn't that actually the stated purpose of netbooks... providing a PC operating system in an ultraportable form factor?
The purpose of a netbook is to take the "net" with you in a "book". It's to have a portable Web browser and email and video with you.
Yes, iPad is better at this than netbooks are.
People fucking hate PC's. Nobody wants to take a PC with them except PC hobbyists. People want to take the Web and email and video with them.
> the iPod Touch was really just Apple's (2nd) attempt at a Palm Pilot. It did pretty well
iPod touch is one of the best-selling consumer electronics devices in history. It's today's best-selling game console. It outsold PlayStation, XBox, and Wii combined. It has absolutely nothing to do with Palm Pilots.
> most people actually think there is a functional difference between "iPods" and "mp3 players"
There is, it's called "iTunes".
> Through the magic of advertising, Apple has made [iPad] seem attractive to a huge number of people
The most amazing part of that was how they somehow got that to happen even before they started doing ads.
> but the success so far has been pretty stunning, and there's a good chance the lustre will fade once
> early buyers realize it's too big to fit in a pocket
OMG. You mean it doesn't fit in my pocket! I'm taking it back!
They were selling iPhone and iPod touch, the pocket versions of iPad, for 3 years before iPad. Nobody, but nobody bought an iPad to go in their pocket.
Netbooks don't go in a pocket either. They are twice the size and weight of iPad.
> the next generation of netbooks brings to the table. I'd much rather have the keyboard,
I carry an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard with my iPad. Together, they are much smaller and lighter than any netbook. I mean, much, much smaller. The keyboard fits into a pocket of my bag that is meant to hold a passport, and it has full-size keys, not netbook-sized keys.
> if somebody sells a model with 1080p HDMI out and an SSD at $500 I'm going to be a very happy camper.
That's a Blu-Ray player, not a mobile.
iPad has those features, but only at 720p. In mobiles, HD is 720p, we're not even close to 1080p yet. Not just because of the screens but because of the size of the movie files and the bandwidth of the Internet. Waiting for 1080p is a terrible, terrible reason not to have an iPad. We are talking about iPads and netbooks, these are 10 inch displays. You don't gain anything with 1080p on a 10-inch display.
I'd argue that a significant proportion of people who buy the iPad want the latest device from Apple and don't really think much beyond that.
Hell, when the iPad Nano comes out, they'll queue up for it in droves, tweeting how much better it is than their iPod Touch, because Pad is better than Pod.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You were making good points, then you had to start reaching.
iPad has built in 3G cellular data - HP Netbook does not.
Because add-in cards are impossible to find nowadays! Hell, have you seen those 3G/Wireless AP combo devices that are good for a whole mini-wlan to connect via cell?
iPad is immune to viruses right now - HP Netbook is not.
Fixed that for you.
Why would anyone want an iPad? Because they like the way their iPhone works, and hate the way their PCs work. But they want something with a larger screen than the iPhone for some tasks.
So you've managed to marginalize a device with lots of potential to a market consisting entirely of "people who want a big iPhone". You're arguing for it, right?
I can see immense value in tablet PCs and I'm glad Apple has stuck it's nose in so innovation will return to an already stagnant market. However, the last thing I'm looking to own is an over-sized iPhone. Thanks for helping me decide!
75% of iPad Own Macs so you should change: "and hate the way their PCs work" to "and hate the way their Macs work", and since this is true, you should really replace "HP" with "MacBook*" since that's actually closer to the truth about the average iPad owner