Enough has already been said regarding HP’s recent announcement that they’re exiting the PC hardware biz and killing the Touchpad (
or at least I think they are). I won’t add more unnecessary commentary, but one comment made by HP’s CEO Leo Apotheker really got my attention:
"The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations" Techcrunch’s MG Siegler
wrote a great piece where he went as far as to dub this “the iPad Effect.” I tend to agree with him. Clearly something is going on with the iPad. The iPad 2 announcement even
sparked a similar, but less dramatic reaction from Samsung’s CEO earlier this year.
Everyone has anecdotal iPad evidence that supports Appotheker’s statement. My mom loves her iPad, they’re so intuitive
even babies can use them, and of course Apple is selling them in droves. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Being a data guy though, I need more proof than HP’s failure and a mountain of anecdotal evidence.
My position at salesforce.com allows me to check out our iPad traffic. I figured that if there were any signal of “the iPad effect,” I’d see it in our traffic numbers. Boy did I get a signal. Here's how iPad device traffic to salesforce.com has trended since February 2010:
Since the launch of the iPad, we’ve seen consistent growth. In fact, we’re averaging a week over week growth rate of 200%! I think it’s safe to say the tablet effect is indeed real......err I mean the iPad effect is real.
