Why the iPad sells (to Apple fans only)

Apple announced that the first week-end of iPad sales (that actually includes about a month of pre-orders) totaled 300,000 units. This may seems impressive, but when you look in more details at the sales numbers this is not really good news for the iPad and here is why.

Apple sold to its fans only

A very interesting article from PC World points out that out of those 300,000 users, about 75% were already Mac users and about 66% percent were iPhone users. Now if you also take into account other Apple devices like the iPod touch it is clear that the very large majority of buyers where already major users of Apple products.

Informed people didn't chose the iPad

Another interesting statistic is that around 78% of the buyer did not consider any other devices. This can mean two things:
- First that 78% of the iPad buyers were indeed Apple fans that bought only on the "brand value" rather than on the device actual merits.
- Second that a lot of the people who did actually consider other devices did not choose to buy an iPad. Here is why I think that this scenario is likely:

Why people don't like the iPad

Ars Technica made another interesting poll: Will you buy an iPad, and if not why? About 37% percent of the readership said they would buy an iPad. Now if you consider that a large portion of Ars readership are Apple users and gadget addicts, this is actually not a large number. What is more important are the reason why people won't purchase an iPad. In other words, why did the people that researched the device choose not to buy it. the number one reason is that people don't feel the need for a tablet. the second reason is actual dislike of Apple as a company. The third reason is the inability to purchase apps outside of the app store and the fourth one is the price.

Apple policies are ensuring the iPad failure

If you think about it, reasons 2, 3 and 4 are not technical issues with the iPad but are purely due to Apple policies. If apple was selling the device at a more reasonable price (about $199 to $299 like other ARM based tablets) and was willing to change its policies, mostly regarding the app store and third party application / content they would probably double the number of possible iPad buyers (even I would buy one under these conditions). As it is Apple is currently paving the way for Android and Windows 7 tablets by creating demand for tablet devices but refusing to deliver a product that matches the customers expectations.

Conclusion: the iPad will run out of steam

What I think is that the iPad will initially gain a lot of market share on purchases made by its own customers , but that this will soon run out of steam as these "dry up". Non Apple customers will probably be driven away to competing tablets by Apple policies and the iPad shortcomings. In 5 years I expect Apple to keep about 20% to 30% of the tablet market share and most of the rest to be non Apple devices.