Travels With My iPad

The iPad And What It Means for Travel Marketers, Amazon, HP And A Bunch of Others

Five weeks ago, I started getting phone calls and notes on my office door from UPS. I was one of the people who pre-ordered the iPad and when it finally shipped the UPS people were absolutely certain I couldn't get through one more day without it. When I called them to say they can just re-deliver it the following Monday, they were aghast.

Five weeks and one million iPads later, my iPad already has about 20,000 frequent flier miles. It's been screened at about 5 airports (where the TSA agents announced it "counts as a laptop - put it in a separate bin") and it's managed to increase Amazon's sales by at least $1,000 (more about that below). Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject.

So What’s so great about the iPad?

Simple:

1.   It is an instant-gratification device. One button click, one screen click – and you’re online

2.   Great multimedia experience. Beautiful screen, intuitive touch interface

3.   The coolest brand on earth. That means a lot for experiences.

As result:

Tablet Computing Is Now COOL

Whether or not Apple will lead this category in the long term, Apple has managed to do to tablets exactly what it's managed to do to smartphones a few years ago - take a product category that the general public thinks is only interesting for geeks - and make it a desirable product. This tide will raise all ships, although by definition Apple will lead initially. Companies ranging from upstarts like OpenPeak to leading PC makers like HP will attempt to ride it. In fact, my personal take on HP's acquisition of Palm (and through it Web OS) is that it has more to do with tablets than smartphones.

Apple's brand carries clout and a halo effect that are unprecedented. At this point in time, I am willing to bet that if apple decided to sell pocket-protectors, iPocket will sell a million units in its first month and will become the must-have accessory for everyone with any bit of real or wanna-have chic in the western hemisphere. Easy.

Tablets are the new Notebooks, Magazines and Remotes.

The iPad takes the always-available philosophy of the smart-phone and couples it with a larger screen and a good browser. This makes it the quickest path between you and any piece of content that’s out there on the web, or stored on your iPad, or pretty soon – stored somewhere else in your home. Way faster than a laptop (which you need to boot / wake-up, enter a password into, open the browser...) and in many cases faster than even your TV. The form factor makes it much better ergonomically designed to move around the house and beyond. Tablets will live anywhere that magazines live today – on coffee tables, on the kitchen counter, in backpacks etc. In fact, a friends’ uncle said of his iPad – “it’s a crappy little device” – and meant that in a good way. 

And with the quality of the user interface that’s already there, the web connectivity and some future short-range connectivity WiFi or maybe something like ZigBee – there’s no limit to what we’d use them for in our homes and offices.

Tablets are the next Growth Driver for Browsing – And a big blow to Netbooks

The ability to sit (or lie, for that matter) in your recliner, reach out to a device that is actually easy to hold and get online within less than a second, coupled with a screen big enough to consume standard websites including rich content, gives iPad-browsing an advantage over most other media. iPad browsing is both immediate and satisfying – it takes a second to start, and the experience is just as good as a PC screen.

From a behavioral perspective - this will shift even more leisure-time to the web, and pull the balance in favor of the web for other activities, e.g. commerce, even further. My personal example – my purchases on Amazon over the last few weeks have increased three-fold. This is simply because where once I’d be reading the newspaper or a magazine, now the web is so accessible to me that I’m browsing so much more – and levitating towards online shopping because it seems like “a good use of time” as it replaces actually driving over to Target, Fry’s etc.

And from a consumer electronics perspective? It’s clear what I need a laptop for, but if I have a tablet – why do I need a Netbook? I expect this category will diminish quickly.

Will Tablets Kill E-Books? I’m not so sure.

The very day I got my iPad, my Kindle’s screen died. Just like that. While this may indicate machines have souls (a topic for another day), it also meant I got to continue reading Stephen King’s “Under The Dome” on the iPad – at least until I got a replacement Kindle a week later. I read in bed. I read on a plane. I read on the couch. And I got through less than half the pages that week than I got the week before (when I had my old Kindle) or the week after (when I got a new one). The iPad Kindle app is more advanced than the Kindle user interface. It looks better. But the screen on the Kindle, I guess, is just a better ergonomic fit with our eyes. And for prolonged reading, that matters, and will do for awhile (that is until we buy the iEye iris implants).

What This Means For Online Marketing

I spent quite a few hours on the iPad booking flights and shopping for electronics. I even tried blogging using TypePad. Don’t let the iPad browser fool you – it is NOT your full-fledged desktop browser and the use of a touch interface makes some widgets unusable. Try moving the slider selectors in Kayak for instance. Try clicking some of the tiny text lines for flights on United.com. Or try typing text into TypePad’s post editor.

At the same time – because the iPad is such a great browsing machine, a lot of shopping / travel research will be done through it. This research will be done online and in a stationary place (I am guessing – most of the time using WiFi), and therefore you do not need a native app – but you do need a website that looks and behaves well on an iPad. That shouldn’t be hard to do and will be worth your while.

Comments

[Rob]

(Typing this comment from an iPad). So does this mean that Worldmate will be supported on the iPad? Kind of a waste viewing the iPhone screen on the iPad.

[Carlisle]

Sounds as like you are an Apple afficianado - same question as Rob, Will WorldMate be developing to the iPad?

[Evering2010]

Thak you for sharing them with us , I think it's worth reading