When I asked Resolve about the age groups of iPad users, I found out some other interesting information. The first owners of the iPad tended to be young professionals, 22-45, who were either early adopters in general or had a highly connected and mobile lifestyle.
However, the next group of adopters and those interested in buying an iPad are much older than the one might expect (45+). Anecdotally, I've seen this in my own travels and discussions with iPad or future iPad owners. The first wave of iPad owners were people like myself. The second wave of iPad owners, at least from what I'm seeing, have more in common with my parents.
Not surprised. I’ve been discussing this with a few friends. If the iPad had been around before, this would have been the device they bought before an iPod. Using it is so easy to use, I can’t imagine older users having issues, especially with a clearer, larger screen than an iPod.
From Chris Dixon’s Blog:
Network effects can be your friend or your enemy depending on whether your product has reached critical mass. Getting to critical mass in complementary network effect markets is sometimes called overcoming the "chicken and egg problem." Back in graduate school (2003), my friend Jeff Rhodes and I wrote a paper titled "Six Strategies for Overcoming the ‘Chicken and Egg' Problem in Complement-Based Network Effects Markets." This is a frequent challenge when launching technology products, yet at least at the time we had seen very few people try to systematically document strategies for overcoming it. Some of our examples are a bit dated now, but if you are interested in this topic you might like the full paper.
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
