The good people over at TechnoBuffalo recently put out an article that shows iPad owners are generally older and also wealthier than other tablet owners. Generally, the NPD Group (the guys that did the survey) claim that 50% of iPad owners have yearly incomes of $100,000+, whereas 26% of other tablet owners have over $100,000 in yearly household income.

This isn’t exactly too much of a shock to me, considering the demographic that the iPad is aimed towards. In how many early commercials do you see teenagers using an iPad compared to older people? Plus consider how the iPad’s evolved since its launch to where businesses actually use them in their daily operation? I’ll put it this way; at my pharmacy (I’m a pharmacy technician and a sysadmin) the owner uses his iPad to keep patient invoiced signatures as well as contracts on the go. He is also able to review them and have new signatures made on the iPad itself. He also uses it to maintain his portfolio and to manage the other stores he owns. The iPad has become really useful for him in a sense of easy to use business affiliated tools. Now sure, there are plenty of variants of those same apps available on Android and they work pretty much the same way. However Android has always had a steep learning curve. As my boss puts its, it’s not user-friendly. Sadly, I agree with him.

Android tablets are definitely catching up to the iPad in terms of usability. The apps available as well as the software upgrades that have been hitting our devices makes it better and better each time, but it’s still not at the level of the iPad. Now, a friend of mine suggested I write an article about how the iPad has been approved to be used by Pilots in airplanes for their important documents (he too is a pilot) and how it’s made filling out forms much easier. I thought to myself why aren’t they using Android tablets? Its an easy answer, they crash. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used my Galaxy Tab 7 Plus in class for notes and Docs to Go, Polaris Office, and QuickOffice had crashed. However when I was using an iPad I never experienced that. In fact in most of my lectures all I see are iPads. It used to be everyone had a macbook, now they all have iPads. Damn fanboys.

Here’s how I see it. iPads are for professional use with actual functionality that makes things work. You’re less likely to experience a crash on an application and you can trust that if you’re a professional your information is always a few swipes away. Android tablets are for geeky people who like customizing their shit and tricking it out. Your information is always there, but to get to it get used to using file managers and browsing to your SD card (if your tablet supports it). Sorry if I offend anyone, I obviously fall in the latter category.

NPD 

Technobuffalo