The iPad Will Not Retire: New Launch Dates and New Audiences
By Allison Bland
The release of the iPad by Apple was momentous – a huge star along any timeline of recent events in pop culture. But the release parties won't stop just yet.
For many months, Apple fans and loyalists were in a community of speculation, then anticipation. On Saturday, April 3rd, dreams were realized and tons of people got an iPad. But like your favorite rapper who won't stop putting out albums, Apple is not done releasing hits. The iPad WiFi + 3G model does not arrive until late April and this might be the one you want.
The reasons to want an iPad are clear and have been discussed ad nauseum everywhere.
But the consumer considering the more costly base price of the iPad with WiFi + 3G and the associated costs of a data plan, likely has more questions than your average Justin. Try to look to your neighborhood and your lifestyle for clues about which model is a best for you.
- If you find yourself browsing the web each day on your phone more often and for longer periods of time than you spend on a laptop or desktop, you might want an iPad with 3G.
- If you are accessing the web in this way, and you do not own a laptop or desktop, you might want an iPad with 3G.
- If you live in a multiple person household and a computer is not present or shared sufficiently, you might want an iPad with 3G.
- If you do not have broadband internet access at home, you might want an iPad with 3G.
- If the only business in your neighborhood to offer wireless is McDonald's, you might really want to get an iPad with 3G.
- If you are a non-white person living in a lower-income community in America or anywhere else around the world, a recent study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests your on-ramp to the internet is probably more inclined to be a mobile wireless network rather than a home broadband connection. So you might want to get an iPad with 3G.
On a typical day, African Americans are 70% more likely than whites to access the internet on a handheld device. Only 46% of Black adults are broadband internet users, compared to 60% of whites, and further 48% of Black adults report they have used wireless internet on a handheld device at some point or another, with only 28% of whites answering in this way. The iPad with 3G is poised to introduce a far more sophisticated way to surf on a mobile wireless network – if these communities are reached successfully.
At first look, this new device seems quite expensive and out of reach of many in the demographics I've described. However, the device is designed to be shared and used by many, in a way that iPhone and the iPod Touch are not intended. The cost, even at its most loaded configuration, is less than half the price of a premium computer made by Apple. In this context, the iPad can enter as a powerful solution for home access, serving in the role of the laptop and the desktop computer. It can be used in the house and shared by the family. The 3G ensures connectivity to the world at-large and keeps every household on the map.
There other benefits to a device that closely mirrors the experience of handhelds, too.
In a 2010 SXSW Interactive session called “Kid Apps on Grown-Up Devices,” producers for PBSKids.org dubbed the movement “the Pass Back Effect.” (Maybe Apple can assuage some of the clamor about the iPad's name by suggesting that it is the: I Pass Around Device...) In a study examining their Ready to Learn educational programming on mobile phones, PBS Kids found a couple particularly telling results. Namely, three-fourths of all parents felt that cell phones could be a great learning tool for their kids. And what's more heartening - lower-income, non-white parents were most likely to report that they actually co-viewed the learning content delivered to the phone with their children.
What could be better than a device that captures the imagination of both parent and child? The marriage between accessing effective family apps as well as other interactive content and the aspect of passing devices around seems destined to only become stronger with the growing capabilities the iPad.
The test of course, is if these non-white, lower-income, and especially African American audiences will be reached by Apple. For the reasons I've outlined above, Apple's marketing strategies should target these demographics simply because there is a strong market for a device at this price point in these communities. But beyond moving units, there is a personal and fundamental need for this type of device.
In an interview on The Endgadget Show on March 20, 2010, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of One Laptop per Child, an organization that sells low-cost laptops to developing countries, was asked about the need for devices like the XO in limited access communities in the States. Negroponte considered the point but went on to talk of countries with more pronounced need. In the mission they pursue, OLPC is the best at what they do. But where are the visionaries with solutions to solve community access problems stateside? Intel sponsors “Computer Clubhouses” all over the country, but this program does not extend into the home. Microsoft boasts the philanthropic clout of the Gates Foundation, but a widespread movement in home access has not yet materialized.
The lingering barriers predicated by inconsistent access between home, school, and after-school, and the subsequent effects – impaired digital literacy, the tendency to be strictly consumers and not producers of technology, and more, get deeper each time revolutionary devices are introduced in the marketplace and not invested in by all communities. Why not have successes that are simultaneously world's successes? Eighty percent of the world's population lives within range of a cellular network. Let's tether together.