According to a survey of UK iPad owners put forth by Cooper Murphy Webb, people who own iPads are now using them as their preferred device for reading newspapers, magazines and books. Of the 1,034 iPad owners polled via telephone between July 28th and August 10th, 43% use the iPad for more than 10 hours per week, with most of those usage hours taking place in home.
While the iPad dominates among users for text based activities like perusing magazines and books, the laptop still holds strong as a primary entertainment device — perhaps due to the iPad’s lack of Flash support. I know that I have been discouraged from readily picking up an iPad to watch online video from the Pavlovian effect of those disappointing little blue legos.
Giving ammunition to the “iPad Will Save Reading” camp, 31% of iPad users prefer their iPad to their laptop, mobile phone, e-reader and print media for reading newspapers and magazines, perhaps due to the innovative presentation of news put forward by aggregator iPad apps like Flipboard and Pulse.
And moreover 41% of iPad owners prefer the iPad for reading books, which bodes well for iPad apps like iBooks, Kindle for iPad, and Barnes and Noble.
As a side note to and probably as a byproduct of text consumption, the iPad is also preferred for Internet browsing among UK owners at 38% and gaming at 37% respectively.
iPad owners may be a skewed sample in terms of consumption habits — six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated” according to one survey — and UK owners even more so. But at over 3.27 million iPads officially sold at the end of Quarter 3 (our educated guess is around 5 million so far), Job’s magical and revolutionary product is gaining inroads in the way people at least say they partake in the written word, if they happen to be in the ever increasing class of people that own one.
Photo: Cliph
When we talk about touchscreen-only Tablets, the first device that pops up in mind is the iPad. It is an awesome device in many ways, provided that you find some good use for it. When iPad was launched earlier this year, it was pushed as a device to innovate the way we use our computers, just like what iPhone did with smartphones back in 2007.
The popularity and success of iPad naturally spawned many different manufacturers to bring similar devices to market. There was the JooJoo, the now dead HP Slate, Dell Streak and tons of other Android based devices. But none of them could proved to be a serious challenge to Apple’s offering. Samsung recently announced the Galaxy Tab, an Android 2.2 tablet which is getting lots of attention in media for being the only tablet that can give iPad a serious a run for its money.
Below is a quick showdown between the two touchscreen-only tablets, showing how the more popular iPad stands against the yet to be released Galaxy Tab.
Galaxy Tab’s specs above sure looks impressive, but can this 7-inch device be even qualified as a touchscreen-only Tablet? To me, the fact that you can easily hold it in one hand, make phone calls with it, and take picture on the go makes it more of a one big ass smartphone than a Tablet of iPad class, which should probably be competing with the Droid X, HD2 or the EVO 4G and not the iPad. Yes, the front-facing camera for video conferencing makes sense, and this is probably something Apple should have included with v1 of iPad but then again, iPad is slated for a hardware revision early next year and is very likely to get iPhone 4 like FaceTime video calling feature. The rear camera on the other hand seems completely pointless to me because I don’t think people would like to take photos with a 7″ digital camera.
Coming to the user experience, which is extremely important for a Tablet device of this kind. iOS for iPad is optimized for larger, more spacious screen of iPad. If you have ever used an iPad you would know what exactly I am talking about here. Android 2.2 in its current iteration isn’t ready for large screen devices yet. It is primarily a phone OS which has been forced to do a Tablet job, just like those Windows 7 Tablets with custom UI shells on top. And so to hide Android’s deficiencies, Samsung has come up with a large screen version of TouchWiz custom UI which is also found on their Galaxy phones. This new version of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI (for Tab and Galaxy S) in my opinion is an iOS knock-off, and it has this “iPad/iPhone for Kids” look and feel to it which makes the device look more like a toy for kids, than a serious gadget.
Multitasking on Galaxy Tab shouldn’t be a big deal because by the time you get Tab in your hands, iPad will have all the multitasking goodness as part of iOS 4.2 release in November.
Last but not the least, the sheer number of quality iPad only apps in the App Store compared to the unmonitored crappy mess in Android Market for different Android based devices, the higher price point of Tab (rumored to be between $800 to $1000) compared to iPad etc. only makes iPad a much better value for money than any of the competing devices out there.
Let us know what do you guys think about this. Would you chose an Android Tablet over iPad? and if so, why?
You may also like to check out:
- iPad vs Kindle DX – The Definitive Comparison
- iOS 4.x vs Android 2.2 vs Windows Phone 7
- iPad vs HP Slate – Where Do You Stand in this Mac vs PC War?
- Super Duper Guide to iPad – Everything You Need to Know!
- ASUS Eee Pad is a Windows 7 Tablet that Can Give iPad a Serious Run for its Money!
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