Thursday, May 6, 2010

Inconspicuous Consumption: The Case of the iPad

Last night, on the subway ride home from work, I noticed that the passenger sitting directly across from me was thoroughly engrossed in answering e-mail on her BlackBerry. The woman on my right was thumbing through pages of a New Yorker article she’d printed from the Web. There were several riders with creased newspapers and magazines and as I exited from the subway car, I noticed a couple of Kindle readers hunched over their slim screens.

Noticeably absent from the mix? The iPad.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to my commute. Peering into the windows of various coffee shops around Brooklyn hasn’t resulted in many sightings, either.

We know people are buying them. Apple recently said it hit the one million mark last week, a mere 28 days after the tablet first went on sale, indicating it was selling twice as fast as the first-generation iPhone when it was new.

So where are they? When the original iPhone came out, friends of mine who forked over the $500 to own one couldn’t wait to show it off at every opportunity. Although the iPad is not as easy to slip out of a pocket and demonstrate to friends, I still expected a similar showmanship from proud new owners.

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