The iPad means business for IT decision-makers

Image by IDG

Don’t we all do this? Scan email subject lines and weed out emails not worth reading. One that made the cut was titled:

“Latest Global iPad Trends: Are Tablets Replacing Laptops?”

So, naturally I opened it considering all of the buzz around the consumerization of IT, laptops, Ultrabooks, tablets, especially coming off a week at CES. What I found was an IDG whitepaper download called “iPad for Business Survey 2010“. I downloaded it. Not only is this whitepaper visually attractive with the use of infographics, charts, color-coding, etc., but it was packed with some interesting findings when it comes to the iPad relative to business usage.

A recent survey of US consumers indicated that 60% of iPads never leave the home, and 70% of usage occurs in the living room. Based on IDG’s findings, the usage model is drastically different for IT decision-makers. For example:

51% of IT decision-makers indicated they “always” use their iPad at work, and 79% when on the move.
While, only 54% say they “always” use their iPad at home.

Such a heavy at work or mobile usage begs the question…for what are they using their iPad for?

Like most tablet users, IT decision-makers primarily use their iPad for content consumption (75%). What’s more interesting is that only 29% say they “always” connect to a wireless network when using their iPad. This indicates that much of the content being consumed is time-shifted. In other words, saved offline to the storage on the device. This discovery poses an even greater opportunity for wireless storage devices like the Seagate GoFlex Satellite drive.

Why?

Figure 2 by IDG

Because iPad users likelihood of purchasing media like newspapers, books, CDs, and DVDs declines drastically. Not shocking considering these forms of media have been in decline for years, as digital versions of the same material have increased as has the average capacity shipped for hard drive suppliers like Seagate which recorded the highest ever average capacity at 653 Gigabytes. Contributing to this record number are not only desktop and mobile hard drives, but even more so, enterprise class drives that top out at 3 Terabytes today. Where a good number of these drives end up is in the cloud, and though many IT decision-makers consume time-shifted content (as stated above), a vast majority still use the iPad to connect to the cloud (Figure 2).

I highly suggest downloading this whitepaper. It’s an easy read, and there are some really interesting findings broken out by region, connection, and user satisfaction in addition to usage models.

Getting back to the subject line of the email.

Are tablets replacing laptops? Not completely. Only 16% say the iPad has “completely” replaced their laptop, while 54% say “partially”. The numbers differ from one region to the next with South America having the greatest complete replacement percentage at 27%.

Just like most answers when it comes to IT…it all depends.

Are you an iPad / Tablet user? How much has it replaced your laptop?

The invisible second economy (for servers and storage)

Is the tablet craze coming to an end already?

Images by IDG Connect