A survey by Piper Jaffray says 75% of U.S. iPad purchasers on launch day already owned an earlier model of an iPad. This compares to 58% at last year’s launch. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene (no relation to Herman) Munster says this may be due to the U.S. market getting slightly more saturated.
Surveying 71 day-one iPad buyers, Munster found that the early-adopter upgrade cycle is around 23 months, significantly shorter than the general public’s upgrade cycle of 30 months. Also, the average capacity purchased today was 59.7GB versus 40.5GB for the 3rd-generation iPad launch.
Of the iPad Air buyers who already owned an iPad, only 18% expected to keep the old one, and almost all of those users owned the iPad mini. Munster says it appears that users who own a full-sized iPad seem to be replacing it completely with the Air, however iPad mini users will be using the mini in addition to the Air.
1 in 5 of today’s buyers picked up the 128 GB iPad Air. 94% of the buyers today said they owned an iPhone.
