Little, Big:

Part of me rebels against this observation, for “people like me” form a terribly skewed sample. We do a lot of things with our hardware that the Median User does not do—like install software. (If the majority of applications on your phone, pad or even computer didn’t come with it, you aren’t a Median User.) For people who want to have an iPad as an adjunct to their laptop, the Mini may be near perfect. For people who want to have an iPad as their one portable device, though—something that they really can do Serious Work on—the Mini may not be the right thing.

Yet I can’t shake the notion that I run into a paradox with that premise. Most “Power Users” wouldn’t want to replace their laptops with iPads, yet I suspect it’s only the Power Users (and a subset of them) who would look at an iPad and wonder if they could replace their laptop with it in the first place. The best way to use an iPad is not as a laptop replacement. It’s as an iPad. It’s quite possible that millions of people would rather have an iPad instead of a laptop. And it’s quite possible that many of those would, given a choice, rather have a smaller, lighter iPad, just like many of us who want an iPad and a laptop would.

So what does this mean for non-iPad tablets? If the iPad Mini is the better size, then all those other tablets were onto something, right? Yes, but the original iPad sells more than all other competitors combined. Either buyers vastly prefer 10″ tablets, or buyers vastly prefer iPads. Given that other 10″ tablets have been about as popular as a vegan activist at a Texas chili cookoff, I know which one of those I’d put money on.

Source: Coyote Tracks