iPad adoption rate faster than DVD, says analyst

Is this even a valid comparison? Feels like comparing original iPod to SNES adoption rates.

My (visiting) sister has the original iPhone which is still at 1.1.4 (she lives in a country that doesn't do iPhones and she isn't tech savvy enough to jailbreak her phone).

She is fed up of the WinPC she has at home and had decided she wanted a 13" Macbook Pro and iPhone 4. I gave her my iPad to use and has decided that this is what she wants, so she is buying the 64GB WiFi model (which she will use with a MiFi-like device).

A lot of people who have seen my iPad and the specific Apps that I have think this device is indeed magical, and some have gone on to buy one themselves and a few have bought Macs.

So what? you might say... Well, every one of those was a rabid anti-Apple pro-MS WinPC user.

Sample size. We're talking about 6 months of sales. Not very long to establish a trend. Talk to me next year and tell me if the Ipad managed this brisk pace. Talk to me in 2012 and let me know if it continued to match DVD's pace.

If you take this article and have lived in a bubble - it's accurate. But the rest of us live in the real world and the real world has changed since the DVD player hit the market. Most importantly is the importance and significant of the internet - from several points.

For one - marketing and advertising (and most importantly - SALES) didn't hit it's stride until right around 1996-1997.

With the internet as widespread and used today - the use/dependency for such a device is also more widespread.

Technology (new tech) is always more easily adopted as time goes on. How fast was the adoption rate for TV's in the first year? The first car?

Also - the iPad and computing devices like it have more than a single use making it more useful. DVDs came around when people already had VHS collections and Cable was in its prime. Many people didn't see or have a need for just another way to watch a movie.

So many factors (these are just a few). When you look at scenario like the one posed in the article - you find you can't just compare apples to oranges.

You're not comparing like for like. The iPad is a tablet computer made by Apple, but the tablet category has existed for many years. They entered the market once the category had matured a little. The first DVD players were in a brand new category of product. If you compared early sales of DVD players with early sales of tablet computers, that would make more sense. Or alternatively, compare iPad sales to early sales of a specific DVD player introduced once DVD players had already been around for a few years. Otherwise it's just Apples and Oranges.

Last I checked, DVD players in 1997 cost more than the iPad, and you didn't need to pay $30 per DVD (at the time) to get any utility out of it. Oh, and the iPad wasn't replacing a previously existing product like DVD was compared to VHS.

Carry on.