According to a report from TradePub.com, a seemingly large number of their users, 71 percent to be exact, hold the title of Manager or more. TradePub.com offers up both iPhone and iPad apps that provide professionals with a “simple yet effective way of staying informed of developments in their industry.” Long story short, they provide an extensive library of magazines, whitepapers, and PDFs so you can read what’s going on in your industry at any time, both on the iPad and iPhone.
The report also offers up some other interesting findings: 48 percent of their users were at least Directors in their fields. Most of the reading that occurred in their app was conducted on the iPad, over the weekend, with Sunday nights being their busiest time of week.
Let’s eliminate all the percentages for a second, and the rest of their findings make complete sense. People rarely have time to read these days, so they read on the weekend. Nothing groundbreaking there.
Now let’s talk about the rest of these findings, because people seem to be trying to extrapolate the TradePub findings and use it as a benchmark for the iPad market.
Some Thoughts
Here’s the problem with the report. First, the magazines offered on TradePub.com are very heavily aimed at management types. It’s pretty funny that others are trying to extrapolate any of this information and apply it to iPad usage on the whole in business. At this point, it’s pretty obvious that the iPad is being used in a multitude of ways, in a vast number of positions, in businesses around the world.
Second, who the heck fills out the questionnaires from magazines accurately? Everyone fudges their numbers and answers a little bit.
I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that the iPad is being used by a lot more than employees occupying senior positions in a lot of businesses. There may be a top-down approach going on with the device in some industries currently, like others have suggested, but to say that the iPad is an executive tool is a little bit much, and should be considered hyperbole at the very least.
Executives crave the latest gadgets so they can fawn over them on the golf course with their buddies. Employees need the latest gadgets to actually get their work done efficiently. Anyone employing technology in a top-down method is doing it wrong and should probably be fired.
Article Via The Apple Blog