Five billion Is Better Than Two Billion
While people may often think how PCs have reached everyone on Earth, total install base of PCs is between 1,5 and 2 billion devices. A large number, but it’s taken decades to get here and it represents well under a third of total world population. Smartphones on the other hand have an install base of somewhere around 3 billion, and should be able to reach 4 billion or more in next couple of years. Operating system market share varies by region and by quarter, but it’s been clear for a while now how Android is today’s most commonly used operating system, and that smartphones will bring 3 to 4 times more people online than PCs were ever able to.
This is especially relevant to understand the context surrounding recently announced iPad Pro models for 2017 and upcoming iOS 11 powering them; the updated 12,9 inch model and the brand new 10,5 inch Pro. Due to its fantastic CPU performance, greatly enhanced screen and finally a decent amount of storage, many reviews focused on the potential of new devices to replace your laptop.
While you can do pretty much everything on the iPad Pro that you can do on a MacBook or Windows laptop, there are just too many instances where you get hung up on something that iOS isn’t designed (coded) to handle as efficiently as a MacBook and macOS or a laptop running Windows 10.
It’s also got a lot better as a laptop replacement since the first iPad Pro came out in 2015.
New iPad Pro Inches Toward Replacing PC, but Falls Short
And so on.
But if the verdict were “iPad Pro is a great laptop replacement”, I would find it disappointing.
The question everyone — Apple, reviewers, customers — should be asking is not whether it can replace a laptop, but whether it can reach the audience that laptops were never able to? Can you recommend iPad not to someone already buying a laptop, but to someone who never thought of having one? By looking it as a laptop replacement, in an absolutely perfect scenario for Apple where every single laptop is replaced with an iPad, 80% of world population would not have one. The only way to reach more people is to sell it to people who never would have bought a laptop at all. It’s not impossible; smartphones were already gone there.
When iPad was introduced back in 2010, it was said on stage that a new device, something between smartphones on one side and laptops on the other, will be successful only if it’s much better than a smartphone or a laptop in a few key things: browsing, e-mail, media, games and books.
The main problem for any device in the middle is that whatever is on the left or right will eventually start to squeeze it. And to be successful, device in the middle must keep the edge in key things, or find new key things to excel in. Third option is to fade away.
That was in 2010. Since then, laptops have not done too much squeezing, but smartphones have done a lot. With smartphones having much larger and better displays than in 2010, plus fantastic connectivity capabilities and a huge library of apps, iPad is not anymore clearly better in these key things. Browsing the web on 5–6" screen is perfectly fine even without a dedicated app. E-mail is even better on a smartphone simply because it has a big advantage in portability.
Consequently, iPad (and other Android tablets if they plan to get serious about it) should solve problems that were not satisfactorily solved by PCs. Added features should be considered in the context of “how will this bring brand new users?” as opposed to “how will this make one buy iPad instead of MacBook?”. iOS 11 is a step in the right direction if it liberates iPad from iPhone constraints. New multitasking and drag & drop gestures are great, once user figures them out. They are not too discoverable. Bringing the dock up works, but things get complicated after that point. Some apps can run side by side, some can overlay, some can run in split screen, but rarely is anything obvious.
None of this means that iPad is doomed. Far from it. Even at its lowest, iPad sells 2–3 times more units than MacBooks, but it could and should be more than a laptop replacement.
Which gets us to the beginning of the story. To even stand a remote chance of getting to a market of 4-5 billion, instead of 1.5–2 billion, tablets need to solve new problems, or bring meaningful change to current way of doing things. Laptops have already solved problems that 1,5 billion people had. A device on which to type quickly, and on which someone can use a precision pointing device is not a meaningful change.
Regular iPad is an affordable device that’s at the same time a great app platform, Internet client, Netflix or Facebook machine, and so on. iPad Pro must do much more to justify 2–3 times greater price, and that more should not be limited to matching laptops on feature-by-feature basis. Tech journalists and gadget lovers would like a new take on laptop because, well, they are gadget lovers. Categorising iPad Pro as laptop replacement limits both its targeted audience, and what can be achieved with it.
