Tablets down the Tube
I’ve been thinking about tablets or “slates” for a while since the iPad announcements and read with interest a piece in Wired UK this month titled Tablets of the new covenant. This section caught my eye
Surveying this landscape of slow progress and stalemate, John Squires, an executive vice-president at Time Inc. In New York, noticed something interesting in early 2009. The iPhone, launched by Apple two years earlier, had never been intended as a device for reading large tracts of text. Yet this is precisely what many of Apple's customers started to do when Kindle e-books became available on iTunes in early 2009.
"We saw the reports about the volume of Kindle books being read on the iPhone," Squires recalls. "And we wondered whether maybe people were finally starting to make the turn from the analogue world of paper to digital." He talked with developers: "We asked them about the dwell time in the actual books. It turned out that people weren't just opening these things up for a few seconds. They were sitting down and reading them on the iPhone, spending ten or 15 minutes in these applications."
The iPhone (unlike the Kindle) was looking like a mainstream device. During 2008, Amazon reportedly shifted a million Kindles. Apple shipped 13.4 million iPhones worldwide. In early 2009, Squires met hardware and software providers. By mid-year, it was clear that "in 2010 we'd see a larger touch-screen device with colour and the capability to translate what was so beautiful about print into a digital format".
The emboldened part is mine. My guess is this 15 minutes period is folks reading books on their iPhone on the Tube in London (or other similar mass transit systems). I’m not suggesting this isn’t an important factor or a seismic shift in the way people consume digital media as I often spend my own Tube journey reading stuff on my device. What I think may be a leap too far though is to extrapolate from this that we’re all about to start using Kindle’s or iPad’s on the Tube. I’ve yet to see a single person using a Kindle on the Tube in London – which I could put down to the fact it’s not been on released in the UK for long. My sense though is that a few factors will mean neither device is a common sight on the Tube
- High price compared to a book
- “Nickability” – like it or not, sitting with a £300 device on the Tube is like screaming “steal me”. Of course you could say that about an iPhone but they’re a bit easier to conceal and also why non-white headphones sell so well these days.
- Portability compared to a book
- A book never runs out of power
- Sore thumb – people on the Tube like to be incognito in general. Holding a tablet is gonna make you stand out….a lot
- Size – both Kindle and iPad seem just a little too big to whip out for 15 minutes worth of reading.
The last point is acknowledged later in this piece where David Link, founder of the New York-based design shop The Wonderfactory, says:
“They'll use the larger tablet at home and then continue on a smaller device on the road."
Don’t get me wrong here – I’m not having a pop at the iPad or Kindle in particular as I don’t see the HP slate device faring any better in this scenario. My point is that there are just too many social norms to break down before we see even 5% of Tube travellers sat there with any slate type device for their journey. The iPad may seem like a bigger version of the iPhone but a smartphone is likely to be the weapon of choice for those 15 minute reads for quite some time.
It’s a topic for another post but I suspect this will be exactly reversed on airline flights.
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- Anonymous
February 14, 2010
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February 14, 2010
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