Listen up, iPad owners! Katherine Noyes says your favorite tablet is getting a pink slip!
“Android Tablets Beating Out iPad in Business and IT: Report”
Oh, no! Our iGod has iFailed us! Once again we see that there is nothing we can possess that Open Source software cannot take away! DAMN YOU, ANDROOOOOOOOOID!
Well … uh … should we bother clicking through to the survey to see what it really says? No. Right? Seriously, there’s no way Katherine could be making open-source mountains out of survey mole-hills, right?
[click]
Oh, wait, that’s exactly what she’s doing. Let’s watch Noyes’s personal echo chamber build to a deafening crescendo of reverberation!
Apple’s iPad may still be considered the king of tablets in many quarters, but new research data casts a shadow of doubt over how long that will continue.
Dun-dun-DUNNNNNNNNN!
In fact, a full 44 percent of first-time tablet buyers in business and IT plan to purchase an Android device in the upcoming 12 months, compared with just 27 percent planning to go with an iPad, according to a new study from IDG Connect (IDG Connect is part of IDG, which owns PCWorld.com).
MOAR ANDROID WINNING. Yes, of all the people who’ve so far resisted buying a tablet for fear of angering their corporate information technology gods, 44 percent said they were going to buy an Android device instead of an iPad. This is truly devastating, and the year of the open-source tablet is now unquestionably upon us. QED.
A few lines down in the piece, Noyes lets the open-source devil on her shoulder get the best of her:
For future purchases, though, Android was clearly the preferred choice, with 44 percent of respondents saying they’d choose a device that uses the Linux-based operating system.
Actually, no! Katherine got it right at first and then couldn’t resist exaggerating it. It’s not “future purchases,” it’s “first-time” purchases. And we all know how solid surveys that predict future purchasing behavior are, right?
Let’s check out what IDG actually said, since Noyes seems unclear:
Results show that 71% of respondents own a tablet, 51% of these have an iPad, but more first time buyers will opt for Android over the next 12 months:
— 44% will buy an Android tablet
— 27% will buy an iPad
— 3% will opt for Windows 8
— 21% aren’t sure
(Emphasis the Macalope’s.)
In other words, of the 29 percent that haven’t yet bought a tablet, 44 percent said they were going to buy an Android device. That’s 399 of the 3124 surveyed.
In Noyes’s defense, the IDG press release about this survey also makes heady claims not supported by the evidence.
IDG Connect’s study of 3124 worldwide IT and business professionals demonstrates a startling move away from iPads, especially in developing regions.
The only way you could show there was a “move away” is if you showed that they previously favored the iPad. The Macalope downloaded the white paper and it offers no historical survey results at all, just historical market share. Somehow, though, whoever wrote it had no compunctions about making grand assumptions that favor Android:
Now that a majority (71%) of business and IT executives around the world own tablets, the market’s centre of gravity is shifting toward buyers who regard Android as their preferred option.
IDG seems to assume that people who have purchased tablets will never purchase another again and that from here on out the only game is the people who have been waiting this whole tablet thing out, on account of how it might just be a fad. Let’s look at IT professionals, who are more anti-iPad than the business professionals they support:
49% of IT professionals currently own an iPad. 42% own an Android tablet. However, among IT professionals who don’t yet own a tablet, 49% say they will buy an Android tablet. Only 26% say they will buy an iPad.
49 plus 42 is 91! You’re getting all excited about at most 9 percent! And the iPad’s already owned by a plurality of IT professionals? These people hate Apple! This is possibly the group in the world least inclined to buy the company’s products! You buried the lede!
And this is what Noyes calls Android “beating” the iPad.
Even if Android captures half of the “IT professionals” who don’t own a tablet yet, that’s still not enough to catch up to the iPad.
The Macalope doesn’t make market-share predictions because this stuff moves too fast to hit with any accuracy. But suffice it to say that the overblown reaction to a subset of numbers from a survey of the flighty preferences of buyers not curious enough about tablets to already own one—in a slice of the market notoriously hostile to Apple—doesn’t leave him concerned about the future prospects for the iPad.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]