iPad, tablets clearly disrupting PC market, survey finds

By on Apr 12, 2011 at 5:22 AM
Gaming April 12, 2011

A survey conducted recently by Google-owned AdMob found that tablets are eating into the quality time U.S. consumers spend with their desktop and laptop PCs β€” and the majority of tablet owners might not use their devices the way many pundits believe. A survey of 1,430 tablet owners in the U.S. conducted March of this year suggests that the most popular use for tablets at this point could be gaming. An overwhelming 84% of respondents said they use their tablets for playing games of some type, while 78% said they searched for information on their tablets and 74% said they used email. Another indication tablets could be as disruptive as many analysts believe is the fact that 43% of those surveyed said they use their tablets more than than their desktop or laptop computers, and 33% said they spent more time with their tablet than they spend watching television. 77% of respondents said their use of traditional computers has decreased since buying a tablet, and 28% said the tablet is now their primary computer.

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  • Kuromo

    There are many variables that are not counted in this report. For me it seems something to still promote tablets. I agree that they are changing the way in which we interact with mobile computing but not to the point of replacing a desktop/laptop.

  • Biggles

    Still not a viable replacement for a PC so I’m not sure how disruptive it actually is if a consumer still feels the need to own both. Call me when PC use is displaced altogether.

    • Anonymous

      Nobody ever said anything about tablets replacing PC’s, and this survey is no exception. Tablets can still be disruptive to the PC market, even if they cannot replace PC’s completely for many people.

      If, as it turns out (and as I’ve always assumed), it is true that the vast majority of PC owners use their computers for their typical garden-variety computing, such as playing bejeweled and solitaire, browsing the internet, and sending e-mail, tablets could mean many people will use their PC’s a whole lot less, simply because doing these things on a tablet is more accessible and more enjoyable. This survey more or less supports that theory.

      Now, what will happen if lots and lots of people move from their PC’s and notebooks to tablets for most of the stuff they used to do on their ‘real’ computers? They will use their PC’s a lot less, will not upgrade their hardware as as often, will buy less software for it, etc.

      Just because you still want to have both a PC and a tablet to cover all your computing needs, does not mean people will likely invest a lot less in PC-related software, hardware and services, and that they will just put up longer and accept that their PC’s are slow or don’t work as great as they’d want them to, because 80% of their ‘computer time’ is not on the PC anymore anyway.

  • JD

    As always another useless survey. Asking 0.00001% makes the survey a complete waste of time.

    • Anonymous

      Read up on how statistics work, bro. No need to ask 300 million people in order for a poll to have significance. Sometimes, a sample size of a couple hundred people might be enough, depending on how good your sample is.

      • JD

        Yeah. We all know the less amount you ask the higher the score will be. This survey is just like the rest limited to make people believe what the surveyer wants them to believe. Ask 1% of original iPad user alone & those numbers will drop drastically.

  • Anonymous

    As always statistics can mean whatever you want. For example, from this survey i could gleen the following “facts. ” The iPad is NOT the disrupting force that some pundits believe since almost hal of then use it mostly for gaming. Hence it is not going to affect laptops, and “clearly” it is not making the inroads into the enteprise that some believe it would, made “obvious ” by the small number of users that use it for productivity tasks other than e-mail. Thus it is a toy that could affect television watching, and could spe seious problems for things like the Nintendo Ds and Sony PSP product lines far more than laptop sales.

  • Individual11

    Without some demographic and other background information, this is less than useful.

    Who is using it more: males, females?
    What age group is being sampled?
    Who is gaming more: 12 year olds or 48 year old female school teachers?
    What was their usage of these activities prior to buying the tablet?
    What was their overall PC usage prior to using a tablet?
    and on and on and on……….

  • Anonymous

    This only makes sense if you do realize that 80% of PC users only use PCs for emails, listening to music and web browsing. Windows mobile was the most advance and complete mobile OS and look where it is today.

  • http://www.topgutscheincode.de/ Gutscheincode

    Tablets may be starting to steal people away from their laptops, desktops, and even televisions, according to a survey released this week by Google’s AdMob service. But I don’t think so that it can totally replace PC’s

  • KCRic

    What a bunch of crap. A tablet ‘disrupting’ the pc market? What next, paddle boats disrupting the cruise ship market? They are two totally different platforms meant for different usages – they can’t effect each other. Good job though Zach, anything Apple – we know how you are.

    • Doug

      They may have different core use-case, but it just so happens the tablet’s is 70% of what people use a PC (or at worst a laptop) for. Hence the crashing in netbooks.

      Cars don’t impact horse carriages either, right?
      Airplanes and semi’s had no impact on goods shipped by train, right?

      • Anonymous

        Comparing the car/carriage dichotomy to that of PC’s vs Tablets is a gross oversimplification. I know you’re using it for the point of illustration, but it’s just not analogous. The fact of the matter is that tablets themselves will NEVER be as useful as a laptop computer. Our fingers are too clumsy, and the functionality is limited to what we can do with our hands and an accelerometer/gyroscope. Why do you think companies are coupling these products with keyboards and upright stands? It’s impractical to hold a screen out in front of you, or look down at your lap for a lengthy period of time for that matter. We buy tablets with all of these extra peripherals so they fit into the old paradigm to which we are accustomed, because it’s more functional and makes more sense. Tablets can make certain activities like checking email a bit more “fun” as it were, but precision will always be the limiting factor in the “tablet” world, so the old “train” of notebook computing it’s not going to be replaced by the “airplane” of tablet computing, ever.

      • Doug

        Yeah, it is an oversimplification, but it _is_ analogous. Tablets don’t have to be as useful/flexible to deliver a meaningful shift. Today, an iPad out performs a laptop today in a few ways: instant on, a flat/unsophisticated OS that does little more than deliver access to applications, laptops/pc OS’s just aren’t “flat” they expect to run background services –which are great, but slow things down when you’re trying to do a quick, basically singular task.

        You can’t beat a train for efficient good delivery, but a plane gets it there faster. A PC/laptop is great for being able to do about anything, but a tablet will outperform it for many “tasks.”

  • Neoprimal

    Clearly the sample poll hasn’t tapped into many of the 11 million WoW subscribers out there assuming even 10% of that number lives in the U.S.

    I can see tablets eating up some computing ‘cycles’ and certainly being disruptive, but I can’t see them cannibalizing PC sales at all, based on the mere fact that there are many, many things that you currently can’t do on a tablet.

    You can play games, check email and surf…and maybe even manage some form of productivity with the use of an added keyboard…granted many people own computers for these very things but you can’t play many of the games available on the PC, you can’t do any real hour crunching marathons of Word, Excel or Access and you certainly can’t do much in the way of media authoring or editing.

    So really I think they’re mostly disruptive in the PC market regarding the people who own them FOR these tasks and these tasks only. The same way the smartphone may be disruptive to the digital camera market in terms of people just wanting to take everyday photos of things vs. people who care deeply about the quality and depth of their photos.

    In the end, I think it’s easier to live without a tablet than it is to live without a PC/Notebook – and that’s what really counts. I love my tablet, don’t get me wrong…and the survey has it right that I do waste time on it, I’m always fiddling with it somehow, either playing games or checking out news on Pulse or listening to music or watching youtube or just discovering new/different apps etc. But I still definitely need my PC and it definetely hasn’t been as disruptive a device in my case since I prefer and find it easier to write emails (esp. long ones) on my PC and I don’t play bejeweled and stuff anyway, I play WoW so any games I play on the tablet aren’t really taking me away from gaming on the PC, per se…it’s more like a branch or parallel niche I’ve fallen into.

    If it boiled down to picking a tablet OR PC and not being able to own both, am I wrong in having the opinion that more people would choose to buy a PC? I know I’d pick the PC hands down.

  • Drew

    Nice one Zach… A total of 1,430 respondents for this survey and of those, 62% use it less than 2hrs a day. Whoooaa, clearly that’s a huge chunk out of the PC market. What is clear Zach is that the websites you found these at (GigaOm, Macgasm…), say nothing of the sort. They simply state, “This is what the iPad is used for” or “Guess what tablets are used for..”. Again, with your twisted and one-sided headlines that couldn’t be further from the truth. Can you please just STOP with the glorification and embellishment and just cover the facts and stop putting YOUR slant on EVERYTHING?? That wasn’t rhetorical, I’m serious. Can you??

  • Anonymous

    I don’t think this is a change in the way people use computing devices as much as computing devices are coming out that are more in line with the way people want to use them. Many people use PCs just for email, web surfing and casual games. We now have devices that allow you to do that easily, so those people might not be as interested in a bulky PC.

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