Elizabeth Grigg compains that Tablet evangelists doth protest too much. To bolster her argument she compares the adoption of the iPod with the Tablet and suggests that the Tablet isn’t going to be as successful as the iPod so get over it.
Uh, actually, despite what Elizabeth argues and what most people think, the Tablet is doing very well, thank you.
Time for some numbers.
The iPod was launched in November 2001 and as of January 2004 has sold 2 million units. Not bad for three years.
What about Tablets? Well, Tablets were launched in November 2002 so they haven’t been around for the same length of time as these iPod stats, however, analysts are stating that Tablets are in line to reach one million units by Jan 2005.
So yes, after three years it looks like iPods will have outsold Tablets 2-to-1.
But not so fast. iPods sell in the $400 range. And Tablets sell for around $2000. There’s a five times difference in price. In fact, for the price differential you might expect Tablets to have sold even fewer units.
OK. Now let’s look at the revenue equation for a minute. Two million iPods at $400 each is $800 million in revenue. Not bad. But hold on. One million Tablet units at $2000 each yields a market size of $2 billion. Yep, Tablets are on track to be a market much larger than the iPod market.
Tablets are doing quite well–even on the iPod scale.