Some 48 percent of iPad users accessing Yahoo's network of sites visited Yahoo on the iPhone previously, said
Yahoo researchers May 6.
Apple's iPad tablet computer has
rocketed to more than 1 million sales in less than a month, with the 3G version
tacking on more sales upon its release last weekend.
The device uses a variant of Apple's iPhone OS, so users
comfortable with the iPhone may logically be drawn to the iPad, whose
touch screen resembles, well, a big iPhone touch screen.
So we know that many
iPad owners are also iPhone owners, but who is buying these devices?
Yahoo researchers, who have been analyzing the use of the iPad on
the company's network since a week after its launch, said males in
the 35-44 age group were among these early users.
This population concentration, fitting the "classic
early-adopter profile," was 36 percent higher than the typical Yahoo user, according to Yahoo's Insights
Ashley Cheng.
Sixty-six percent of iPad users were men who had money to spend.
"Given the economy, people with higher earning power
were probably the first to buy the iPad,"
Cheng said. "The first Yahoo iPad users were 94 percent more likely to be
affluent consumers with solid wealth and strong incomes than typical U.S. Yahoo
users."
Most iPad users flocking to Yahoo accessed Flickr,
Finance, Sports and News, with Flickr usage by iPad users is 143 percent higher
than average. So users are consuming a lot of media on the iPad.
This
blog post from Chuck Hollis, vice president and global marketing CTO for
storage giant EMC, sums up the use case well:
"I don't think I'll be buying any more desktops
going forward," Hollis wrote May 6. "I don't think I'll even be
buying any more laptops going forward. They've all been largely obsoleted (at
least at my home) by a sleek $499 device that doesn't really have any right to
be called a 'computer' in the traditional sense."
Hollis' perspective dovetails with research from analysts
who claim the iPad is gobbling sales normally generated by netbooks.
Morgan Stanley's internal research team found that 44
percent of iPad owners surveyed said they would forgo purchasing a notebook,
while 24 percent said they would pick the iPad over MacBooks and 20 percent
said they would choose an iPad over PCs.
Indeed, Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe said the rollicking success
of the iPad sets up the device as the fastest consumer product growth to the $1 billion revenue mark in history,
taking less than 80 days from the beginning of preorders to reach that
milestone.
Google's Android tablets
can't hit the market fast enough for those who want a tablet but
dislike Apple products or desire what are likely to be Android-based
tablets in the $300 range.
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
