Tech punditry best left to the five-year-old experts

Few forecasters, apart from children, guessed how the iPad would create a new product area and market

JUST OVER a year after it was launched, and more than 20 million or so sales later, the iPad is an example of why, in the area of technology products, sometimes nobody really knows anything.

It’s no easier to determine what will make a hit electronics product than it is to pinpoint the ingredients that will create a blockbuster film. With a technology product, you can up the ante by creating an item with a solid build, thoughtful design, great usability, and a coolness or usefulness factor, ideally a combination of both. But whether a market will emerge for that product is anyone’s guess.

And I do mean anyone’s. There are people who seem a better bet at predictions than, say, your aunt Gladys or your five-year-old nephew – industry analysts for example, or some of the high-profile technology bloggers, who are generally well informed, familiar with the industry, take time to carefully analyse something new, and then voice an opinion.

But in the case of the iPad, your nephew might well have been more accurate at predicting its phenomenal success.

I know that my five-year-old nephew took one look at my iPad, figured out a touchscreen interface in no time, and announced he wanted one.

As far as he was concerned, this was the best technology product he’d ever set eyes on – and if his allowance had permitted, he would’ve been down to the local Apple Store on his tricycle to buy one.

Meanwhile, let’s hark back to the first month of the iPad’s launch and recall how wrong so many of the grown-up tech bloggers, journalists and analysts got this device (take a trip down memory lane by scrolling down through all the negative comments from the pros here: http://short.ie/omahvs). While there was plenty of giddy excitement, and certainly plenty of hype, much of that came from media folks who don’t cover technology as their beat.

Which might in itself have been a signal that many in the tech crowd were going to miss the point with the iPad – and many did.

What did they see wrong with the iPad? Let me count the ways. No inbuilt camera. No USB ports. Too large. Too small. Won’t run several programs at the same time. Won’t run Flash. Can’t run Mac programs. Can’t use an iPhone as a modem. No proper keyboard. Too expensive. And lots more.

All of this is more or less true of the first iteration of the iPad. But it turned out that none of these things mattered much to anyone except the tech-fixated, many of whom predicted buyers would hold off and wait for the next release of the device.

That may have been the case for some buyers – it looks as if the recently launched iPad 2, which addresses some of these issues, sold about half a million units on its first Saturday on sale.

One analyst, Gene Munster, said his research indicated about 70 per cent of those buyers were first-time iPad owners.

But the first version of the iPad, “shortcomings” and all, sold 15 million units in its first year – light years beyond what the most bullish analysts and tech pundits predicted.

One blogger at market analysis site Asymco.com highlighted how wrong those initial predictions (including his own) were (http://short.ie/vhe2hm).

Within months, the business press was buzzing with articles about the top iPad apps for business users, while iPad games were flying off the virtual shelves of Apple’s app store.

It turns out that there is a massive market for the less complex casual games available for the iPad – so much so that the traditional games market, with its high production costs and long time to market for individual games, is under serious pressure.

The one area in which the iPad was predicted to be transformative – in creating a new way for consuming news and accessing media – is the one area that hasn’t really found its feet. I think the device will lead the way in the search for new ways of news and other media access.

Few guessed how thoroughly the iPad would create a whole new product area and market (witness all the touchscreen tablets flooding the market now as others catch up).

Maybe that is something a child could have seen coming – better than the pundits and analysts, anyway.