From what I personally saw there were more than 500 people lining up in front of the Shibuya Apple Store during the iPad 2 launch day May 28th in Japan. Many of them had been lining up for more than 12 hours since the day before.  They stayed over night, with folding chairs, sleeping bags and cushions, not even the cold weather and rain sent them home!  This was how badly people wanted the iPad 2 in Japan.  I wouldn’t even call that macfans, but mac junkies!

Why would these people want an iPad so badly?

So last March Admob a mobile advertising company acquired by Google released some interesting research results about the tablet pc aka the iPad.  Most of the results were based on the iPad since this tablet has 85% of the market share.

From the study I was not surprised to see that the vast majority of users use the iPad for, guess what, gaming!!  84% of the tablet users are just using it to play.  On the other hand another result concluded that 59% of the respondents spend more time each day on their tablet than, guess what, reading a paper book. Well at least some users are saving some paper.

Here is the breakdown of the iPad usage:

• Playing games 84%
• Searching for information 78%
• Emailing 74%
• Reading the news 61%
• Accessing a social network56%
• Consuming entertainment 51%
• Reading ebooks 46%
• Shopping online 42%
• Other 19%

On the other hand from another study from what the App market shows games are on the 1st place with 58% of the store downloads. Supply and demand clearly shows that games are the most profitable applications because they have the biggest market.  And most of these games are puzzles, action and adventure software. If you ask me what I think about games, I would say its just a waste of time.  I have been there, with the PS, Nintendo and iPhone.  All I can say, I could have used my money and time better.  Anyways some people might say that games contribute to developing certain skills, however I might disagree to some point.

With more than 20 million iPads since its launch and hundreds of millions of iPhones out there, the gaming market is huge, I just wonder how many of those games are really productive.

Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdMob

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/admob-tablet-research-gaming-search-email-top-uses-for-ipad-not-entertainment-14441/

http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1003389