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[Graham]

Back in 2006 I gave a talk at The Edinburgh Festival suggesting that by 2010 we'd be storing a lot of our media in cyberspace (now called "the cloud"), everything that could be streamed would be streamed including apps, desktop PC's would - to all intents and purposes - be dead and that laptops would be on death row.

I was royally flamed online, almost to the point of death threats, by 40 year old teenagers with a penchant for over-clocking their PC's and putting neon lights inside them - http://bit.ly/deadlaptops

So it comes with some sense of mischievous satisfaction to read the following article in the Wall Street Journal - http://bit.ly/d7EGK7

and The Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/17/ipad_eats_laptop_sales/

which reports:

iPad sales are slashing laptop sales by as much as 50 per cent, according to the boss of US retailer Best Buy.

Announcing sales of $11.3bn and profits of $254m for the second quarter Best Buy's chief executive Brian Dunn said internal research showed half of potential laptop buyers had chosen an iPad instead of a traditional laptop.

Dunn told the Wall Street Journal that internal estimates revealed iPad sales "had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50%".

i wonder how this will impact the use of ICT within schools and university or how it will affect schemes like Home Access and whatever might replace it?

[James Clay]

The comments on http://bit.ly/deadlaptops are quite amusing really... though the language leaves a bit to be desired.

It really does show that most people don't know what the future will bring (though obviously you do Graham).

Noticed this today via Macrumors.

http://is.gd/fO28r

CNBC  reports that the iPad has become the most quickly adopted non-phone consumer electronics product in history, topping the DVD player, which shifted only 350,000 units in its first year on the market. Apple sold over 300,000 iPads in its first day, and took just 28 days to reach one million units sold.

iPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April release and its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past the one million units the iPhone sold in its first quarter and the 350,000 units sold in the first year by the DVD player, the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product.
While many products have quickly reached sales into the millions of units, Bernstein appears to be focusing on consumer electronics categories, where the iPad has seen unusual success as the launch product in a segment as it has been jumpstarted by its connection to the rest of Apple's iOS ecosystem.

Perhaps more interesting is Bernstein's observation that the iPad is set to become the fourth-largest consumer electronics category in 2011 with over $9 billion in sales.

At this current rate, the iPad will pass gaming hardware and the cellular phone to become the 4th biggest consumer electronics category with estimated sales of more than $9 billion in the U.S. next year, according to Bernstein. TVs, smart phones and notebook PCs are the current three largest categories.
Bernstein's Colin McGranahan also suggests that the iPad is likely to be "cannibalizing" even TVs and digital cameras, noting that customers who make $600 iPad purchases are likely to delay purchases of other electronics due to financial considerations.

I remember presenting this

http://www.online-conference.net/jisc/content/clay/conference/html/0000.html

about five years ago and people thinking I was mad.... that in no way would anyone want to access a VLE on a small screen...

And now we see things like this http://www.pragmasql.com/home/moodletouch.aspx