I spent the day in San Francisco today at a conference called Starup Lessons Learned. It was an amazing conference and the first of its kind. Check it out here.
Anyways, what was interesting about the trip is that I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing an iPad. No joke. Nearly everyone at the conference either had a Mac or an iPad and it just struck me how Apple products are continuing to take over the world. Every single bus stop, bill board, etc. had an iPad ad. Even the doorman at a bar we went to had an iPad and was checking people in.
It just surprised me how quickly people are adopting something new like the iPad when it’s really not a revolutionary device. Come on, it’s basically a big iPhone (I already have an iPhone) that doesn’t have a camera, doesn’t use flash, can’t multi-task and doesn’t have a ton of applications. It’s really not a computer, can’t store files the way I want, I can’t customize it the way I want, there’s just soo much it DOESN’T DO.
So how the hell did they sell over one million units in just 73 days, about 2 and a half times as fast as the first iPhone did?
It’s obviously a whole bunch of things, but if someone other than Apple or Steve Jobs had of pitched this product to a venture capitalist I’m sure they would have laughed. What’s your value proposition? What’s your competitive differentiators? What features or benefits does the iPad provide that competitive products currently aren’t getting?
In my opinion, the iPad doesn’t really allow anyone to do anything new. And, the last time I checked there wasn’t millions of people rallying about how difficult it is to surf the web with a laptop on your couch.
I think Apple understands a few things really well:
- Less is more: It’s not about how many features you have or how many things you can do. It’s about how many things you do “WELL”. There’s a concept. How much of Dentrix do you use? How much of Microsoft word do you use? But consumers and companies out there still think that quantity is more important than quality. It’s difficult to have both, even a multi-billion dollar company like Apple knows that.
- Pain where people don’t know they have pain: You don’t know that what you’re using sucks right now, but it does. Everything can always be better. If Henry Ford had of asked customers what they wanted before he created the model-T they would have asked for a faster horse.
- Cool factor: It takes a lot of time and money to make something feel good and be cool, but it’s important. People care about that stuff and it’s evident in how consumers make purchasing decisions. Apple understands that these details are what differentiate their products.
Oh yeah, and they obivously understand marketing.
What’s the moral of the story? I went and bought an iPad, even though I didn’t want one and so did a couple million other people.
Damnit. I guess we’ll just have to build some awesome Curve applications on it :).
Matty in SF
