Time to market: how long can the chicken cross the road?

All right, we have lost enough time: between the moment I got my idea and the moment our team was up and ready, 9 months have been wasted.
Everyone tells you that time to market is everything. I challenge this opinion. Big time.

Time to market, a time bomb?

Don't get me wrong here. Time is important, it's a variable you need to take into account. but it's not everything. Between the time the web was accessible (1995) to everyone and Facebook turned out (2005), how long? Sure HTML evolved and web changed into 2.0 but was technology the only issue here? Of course not, maturity is what matters here.
The first iPod was released in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the first iPad was shipped on April 2010. And those products keep evolving. Even if that sounds strange in a world where technology is everything, products and markets evolve and mature with time.

First car phone, not so cool when you use it in a roundabout

If you take into account the equipment rate, people started using the iPad in 2011. Do we really know all the usages that are enabled by the iPad? And I'm talking only about general apps. Now let's talk about business apps.
Even if everyone agrees that the laptop is doomed and that tablets are to replace it, how many people do you know have given up their laptop since they have an iPad? None. And why's that? Because businesses cannot yet replace laptops and despite all the "freemium" frenzy and what your kids may think, iPads are not for free.

The average price of the iPad is $550 in march 2012 whereas the average price of a windows laptop is $513. So instead of spending $513, the average business would spend more than a $1000 per user? Not likely.
When both features and prices will be in line, then you can guess laptops will drop sharply and join VCRs, wired phones and stereo systems in history books. With Amazon, Google & friends and Windows & friends trying to jump in the bandwagon, you can bet this will happen.

Don't worry, everyone will have a tablet

Now there are about more than 1.8 billions laptops out there (about 380 millions are sold every year and I took 6 years lifetime if you want to know). And how many iPads are out there? 80 millions as of September 2012. Do I let you do the maths?
So when the market is 5% of what it should become in, say, 3 years,  who is arrogant enough to tell you how such a massive number of people are going to use and behave with their tablets?

Instead of concentrating on time, tablets software vendors must concentrate on getting the right product with the right features, able to evolve with the market. 

Does iTakeNotes fall in this category? You bet!