Apple iPad User Analysis — Phase II

With three million iPads sold¹, it appears that sales aren’t slowing any time soon. In our first look at Yahoo! iPad users, we revealed who these users were, what their interests were, and the properties they were visiting on the Yahoo! network. This time, we’re going to answer the following questions:

1. Two months later, does the demographic makeup of the U.S. Yahoo! iPad user look the same as it did in the first few days of the iPad’s release? Are their behaviors and interests still the same or have they changed?
2. With the launch of the iPad in nine new countries on May 28, do these latest users have the same demographic profile and behaviors/interests as the Yahoo! iPad Early Adopters in the U.S.?

An update on the Yahoo! iPad user in the U.S.

We are calling the users we looked at in our first-round analysis “Yahoo! iPad Early Adopters” because they were visiting the U.S. Yahoo! network on the iPad within the first nine days after the iPad launched. These users skewed heavily male, affluent, and strongly interested in finance and sports — much like early adopters of high-priced tech products.

In the second phase of our Yahoo! iPad user analysis, we were particularly interested in learning if there were any meaningful shifts in the user base — especially since we’ve observed a 7x increase in the number of users visiting Yahoo! services from the iPad during the first two months after the iPad launched.

The chart to the left illustrates this rapid growth, which also resulted in a shift in the percentage of women who are now Yahoo! users via their iPad. The user base continues to skew male, but is becoming more gender-balanced; the male to female ratio moved from 2:1 to 3:2.

Another notable difference is which properties these users are visiting on the Yahoo! network. While Flickr, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, and Yahoo! Sports are still popular; Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Shopping, and Yahoo! Travel increased 28%, 25%, and 22% respectively, compared to the Yahoo! iPad Early Adopters. This likely indicates that the behaviors of the user base are shifting.

What has stayed the same between the Yahoo! iPad users more than two months after launch and the Early Adopters is that the sweet spot for this user base continues to be in the 30–54 age range, and that about half of the Yahoo! iPad users have been using Yahoo! for at least six years (see charts below).

As the iPad user base on Yahoo! has increased, the interest in business/investment topics among these iPad users did not decrease. On the contrary, it grew 46% compared to the Yahoo! iPad Early Adopters, or 130% more than an average Y! U.S. user. The search category also has the highest penetration rate index; these Y! iPad users are 2.8 times more likely to search for investment-related information than the Y! U.S. average.

The International Yahoo! iPad Early Adopter

With the May 28 availability of the iPad in nine countries across three continents, we were able to track international users for the first time, and compared the characteristics of the international iPad Early Adopters to the Yahoo! U.S. Early Adopters (see charts below).

Yahoo! iPad users outside of the U.S. show similarities in demographics. In general, the male skew is the same internationally as it is in the U.S., though it is stronger in Japan, where male users outnumber women 4:1. Similarly, the 35–44 age cohort is the largest among all international iPad users on Yahoo!.

Unlike the U.S., interest levels in technology were substantially stronger in all nine countries, with the U.K., Australia, and Germany showing between 3–4 times higher interest than the U.S. On the Search side, technology and finance searches on the Yahoo! network were the strongest.

Ashley Cheng

Yahoo! Insights

¹ Apple press release titled “Apple Sells Three Million iPads in 80 Days” – June 22, 2010