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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.