Where Do Tablets Fit in Computing Devices Spectrum?

Ever since the iPad launched, lots of us have been trying to figure out where the tablet device fits in the spectrum of computing devices. Nobody has trouble with iPods, though the iPod "touch" causes questions. People understand PCs, notebooks and even netbooks. People have no trouble figuring out where smartphones fit.

Tablets are harder to categorize. They seem to be "content consumption" devices, but it now appears that is the case both for business and consumer applications. Content consumption in the former case means access to email, instant messaging and other Web-based applications. In the latter case, though email is helpful, video and gaming seem to be the drivers.

But it probably won't be the case that tablets are clearly distinguishable by type of user or mode: business or consumer.

Deloitte predicts that in 2011 more than 50 percent of computing devices sold globally will not be PCs. While PC sales are likely to reach almost 400 million units, Deloitte’s estimate for combined sales of smartphones, tablets and non-PC netbooks is well over 400 million.

Unlike the 2009 netbook phenomenon, where buyers chose machines that were essentially less powerful versions of traditional PCs, the 2011 computing market will be dominated by devices that use different processing chips and operating systems than those used for PCs over the past 30 years.

Deloitte’s view is that traditional PCs will still be the workhorse computing platform for most of the globe in 2011. PC unit sales are expected to rise by more than 15 percent year-over-year, and the global installed base of PCs stands at over 1.5 billion units. At the end of 2011, non-PC computers will still represent only about 25 percent of all computing devices.

However, when looking at the future of computing devices, 2011 may well mark the tipping point as we move from a world of mostly standardized PC-like devices, containing standardized chips and software, to a far more heterogeneous environment.

In 2011, buyers of computing functionality, whether in the enterprise or consumer sector, will face some interesting choices. In this new era where more than half of all new computing devices sold are non-PCs, the ranges of price, performance, form factor and other variable will be at least an order of magnitude wider. Choosing will take longer, and will need to be done more carefully.

read more here

Role of the PC Has Changed, Says Deloitte

Netbook Demand Seems Weaker: Issue is Why

A ChangeWave survey of 3,108 consumers during October suggests essentially-flat demand for desktop PCs, unchanged levels of demand for laptops and lower demand for netbooks. Most observers will be quick to point to stronger demand for tablet devices as the reason for the lower interest in netbooks.

The percentage of respondents saying they plan on buying a desktop over the next 90 days (six percent of respondents) has ticked up one point since ChangeWave's survey in August, while planned purchases of laptops (eight percent ) remain unchanged.

Consumer interest in netbooks (14 percent of respondents) is down about 10 percentage points since the June 2009 survey.

Changewave survey - tablet pc and apple ipad

Tablets Becoming a User's Second PC

Tablets will be used as a second computer, primarily for media consumption, with a laptop becoming their principal computing device, Forrester Research analyst Sarah Epps says.

Tablet computers like Apple's iPad will outsell netbooks by 2012 and surpass desktops by 2015, growing at a 42 percent compound annual growth rate between now and 2015. She estimates there will be about 3.5 million tablets sold in 2010.

By 2015, only laptops will have a greater share of the market, with 42 percent, versus a projected 23 percent market share for tablets.

PC Sales Up by 52% Next Five Years, Forrester Says

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has compared the PC to a farm truck, saying that when America was an agrarian economy, “all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farm."

The analogy is that PCs will be displaced by new devices such as the iPad.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, obviously does not agree. “I think people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come," he said. "The PC as we know it will continue to morph form factor."

Semantics aside, there still is a question: is the iPad something new, a new market, or simply a new PC form factor? Steve Jobs may not view the iPad as a PC, but we do, says Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester Research analyst.

"Our view is that the consumer PC market in the United States is indeed getting bigger," she says. "Over the next five years, PC unit sales across all form factors will increase by 52 percent."

Desktops are the only type of PC whose numbers will be fewer in 2015 than they are today, she argues.

Growth will come from new form factors like tablets, but laptop sales will increase steadily also.

Tablets will, however, cannibalize netbooks, outselling netbooks starting in 2012.

In 2015, 23 percent of all PCs sold to consumers in the US will be tablets.

link

Netbooks Are Changing Consumer Expectations

A new survey by PriceGrabber.com suggests netbooks have set new expected price points for computer purchases, an outcome many suppliers likely feared would be the case.

The percentage of online consumers who personally own a netbook has increased from 10 percent last year to 15 percent early in 2010. Moreover, 11 percent of consumers plan to purchase a netbook in 2010.

The disparity between the dollar amount consumers are willing to pay for their next device compared to the amount they paid for their last device is evident. About 65 percent of consumers say the maximum amount they plan to spend on their next computing device is $750, even though 52 percent of online consumers spent more than $750 on their last device.

The average price of products in the PriceGrabber.com laptop category dropped to $645 in December 2009, from $808 in December 2008. This suggests a 20 percent decrease in average price.

Netbooks are more of a complement than a replacement for laptops, though. Some 55 percent of consumers do not see a netbook as a feasible replacement for a laptop. Additionally, 63 percent indicate that a netbook is best described as an additional device while on the go, not a substitute for a notebook or desktop PC.

The largest age group of netbook owners has shifted from 35 to 54 years to 45 to 64 years over the past year, the survey suggests.

In January 2009, 53 percent of netbook owners were between the ages of 35 and 54 as compared to only 31 percent one year later. In January 2010, 55 percent of netbook owners fall within 45 to 64 years of age as compared to 43 percent last year.

Of those consumers who indicate personally owning a netbook, 86 percent also own a laptop and 73 percent also own a desktop. More netbook owners indicated also owning laptops and desktops last year.

The survey suggests there is an opportunity for netbooks to cannibalize other products, though. In fact, 72 percent of consumers see a laptop as a feasible replacement for a desktop, 45 percent of consumers see a netbook as a feasible replacement for a laptop, and 27 percent of consumers see a netbook as a feasible replacement for a smartphone.

How PC Usage is Different from Mobile

To state the obvious, users behave differently on their mobile devices than they do on their PCs, which ought to have implications for a world where perhaps half to two thirds of all Web and Internet access is from a mobile device.

A study of 16 information workers over a period of time illustrates some of the differences (again, keeping in mind that habits likely continue to evolve).

Mobile service providers, for example, know there is a huge difference between users on PCs and smartphone users.

Namely, PC users consume lots more data. And that is what the study conducted by Microsoft and the University of Washington also noted. The other obvious observation was that phones are used for voice and text messaging. PCs can be used for those applications, but in this study of office workers, that was not the case.

And productivity applications, though important for desktop use, was not the focus on mobiles, where "maps" seem to be more important, as you might expect. Users relied on both devices for email and Web access. Beyond that, the usage profiles were different.

Aside from the sheer difference in volume, understandable given the "on the go" nature of a mobile phone, users did different things on their mobiles. One might hypothesize that mobile device input-output limitations and time constraints (people are on the go) account for much of the difference in behavior. Heavy document or file interactions are not prevalent on mobiles.

That doesn't mean people will stop doing things at their desks that require full PC support. It does suggest that as use of mobiles becomes a bigger driver of Internet usage, the key applications will change. Mobiles are "becoming PCs," but that does not mean they will be used the same way, at all. The Microsoft study simply confirms that fact.

Are Emerging Market Consumers Different?

A new study by Accenture suggests that, in a globalized world, consumer demand for a wide range of technology products is remarkably similar, at least among those emerging market buyers with disposable income.

In fact, consumers in emerging markets are twice as likely as those in developed markets to purchase and use consumer technology in the next year and are more willing to pay a premium for “environmentally friendly” consumer electronics products, says Accenture.

The Accenture survey of 16,000 consumers in four “mature” countries (the United States, Germany, France and Japan) and four “emerging” countries (China, India, Malaysia, and Singapore) suggests current and future spending and usage patterns for 19 different consumer technologies, including smartphones, high-definition TVs and computers, is remarkably similar in developed and emerging markets, with one exception: developing market consumers are more likely to buy smartphones, PCs and other devices over the next year.

Compared with consumers in mature countries, consumers in emerging countries are more than two and a half times as likely to buy a smartphone during the next year (52 percent  compared to 20 percent).

Emerging market consumers also are more than twice as likely to have bought a smartphone in the past year (67 percent compared to 32 percent).

Twice as many emerging market consumers are likely to have bought a computer in the past year (40 percent vs. 20 percent). They also are more than twice as likely to have at least occasionally played video games on handheld devices (58 percent compared to 28 percent).

Do they use social networking? Yes, at about a 69 percent rate, compared to 38 percent in the developed markets.

Emerging market consumers also are significantly more likely to pay a premium for consumer products marketed as being environmentally friendly (84 percent compared to  50 percent).

“One of the reasons for this emerging-country growth is the rapid expansion of the middle class with its substantial disposable income,” says Jean-Laurent Poitou, managing director of Accenture’s Electronics & High Tech industry group.

“Furthermore, our research shows that the increased demand for smart connected wireless devices such as smartphones is being driven by social-networking applications.

“Emerging-country consumers use mobile devices more than they do computers to access Internet-enabled applications and services, and consumers in mature countries are also headed in that direction.”

What's Good for Suppliers Also Good for You?

If you casually stroll past displays of PCs on the shelves of any electronics retailer, you'll see at least a few notebooks preconfigured for one brand of wireless data card access. Now, in one sense this is the same strategy used when software comes preloaded on your brand-new machine. Dial-up Internet access services, anti-virus, firewall and security, media players, browsers, games and so forth provide examples.

In the same vein, there has been an argument that the notebook screen represents real estate that a provider's icon must occupy to get more usage or attention. Up to a point there's a clear logic to such thinking.

But there's some point at which the strategy breaks down. Lots of machines sport RJ-11 connections for dial-up Internet access. I don't know how many of you think that's a "feature" instead of a "bug" anymore, but it's clearly not an important feature for many.

The point is that USB and Ethernet ports, like RJ-11 ports, are general purpose computing capabilities. They don't lock anybody into a continuing commercial relationship with any single provider. The user has choice.

Providing that a new notebook has sufficient hard disk capacity, most users probably just ignore all that preloaded software and most of the offers. Norton might disagree, of course, and that might be one of the salient exceptions. Others of us have to spend some time removing all the unwanted software from the machine or at least disabling their ability to start up automatically.

Suppliers might think otherwise, but the incremental cost of preconfiguring a PC for one flavor of 3G data card access probably outweighs everything but the revenue the manufacturer gets from the service provider for preloading the software.

Most people don't seem to have any problem buying a card when they want to use wireless broadband services. To be sure, there might be some instances where a particular buyer of a particular model actually wants to buy wireless broadband from the precise supplier whose access software is preloaded on that machine. But not very often.

Perhaps an argument can be made that the revenue gotten by the PC manufacturer from such deals helps in some small way to control the overall cost of the device. In that sense, there is a consumer benefit. So maybe this is the PC equivalent of advertising. Users might not "like" it, or "want it," but it might help lower the cost of acquiring and using something else (their PC).

Still, it's hard to imagine that preloading broadband wireless for a single provider can be done on a wide-enough scale to produce incrementally-significant customer additions.

The way this could work, though, is to do the reverse: sell a cheap device that actually is configured to use one broadband access provider. Consumers can do the math. If the value of getting a general-purpose computing device is low enough, and the price is lock in to one broadband access supplier, some buyers will do so.

Mac Users do "Think Different"

The NPD Group says consumers who own Apple Mac computers are much more likely than PC users to pay to download music. According to NPD, in the third quarter of 2007 half of all Mac users had paid to download music tracks from sites like iTunes, but just 16 percent of PC owners had done so.

And while Mac users were more likely to pay to download digital music than their PC-using counterparts, they were also more likely to purchase CDs.

“There’s still a cultural divide between Apple consumers and the rest of the computing world, and that’s especially apparent when it comes to the way they interact with music,” says Russ Crupnick, NPD Group VP. “Mac users are not only more active in digital music, they are also more likely to buy CDs, which helps debunk the myth that digital music consumers stop buying music in CD format.”

According to NPD’s consumer panel data, unit-volume sales share for Apple computers increased from nearly six percent in 2006 to almost nine percent between January 2007 and October 2007.

Overall, more than 32 percent of Mac users report purchasing CDs in the third quarter of 2007, compared to just 28 percent of PC users.

In addition to purchasing CDs and downloading music, Mac users are also more likely to listen to music and watch videos on their MP3-players and computers.

While 34 percent of Mac users had uploaded music to their MP3 players, just 16 percent of PC users had done the same. Mac users are also much more likely to listen to music files on their computers (56 percent) than are PC users (31 percent).