When it comes to iPad posts there are Lies, Damn Lies and then Retrevo

A phrase I have quoted before and will quote again is that  "There are lies, Damn Lies and then Statistics." Let me show you what I mean. There was a survey that was done both before and after the iPad was announced of over 1000 random US users of the service doing the report. In the second survey 82% of those contacted had heard of the iPad. Prior to the Jan 27th event only 48% had heard of an Apple Tablet that might be revealed. So Apple grew product awareness from 48% to 82%. Pretty nice.

Lets put the mac market share in perspective. In the 3rd Quarter of 2009 in the US Macs had an 8.8% market share of PC sales. This according to Gartner. That was Apples best market share since the 80's and a slight improvement from the 8.6% market share from the year earlier period.

What if I told you the survey found that of those that had heard of the iPad 11% answered that "I think I would like to buy one" and another 26% said "I'm interested but I need more information before I'd buy one"  or spun another way 37% said they were interested in the iPad and / or wanted to buy one. Over one third that knew of the iPad after the event on the 27th were interested in the iPad. That is really impressive. Even if you took it back to all those that responded 30% were interested in the iPad. That is over 3.5 times the market share Apple currently has with the Mac. That is what the survey said. Those are the facts from the Survey.

If you projected that out to the US population as a whole - Over 31 Million iPads could be sold to those that want one now and another 73.5 Million to others interested or that there is potential demand of over 100 Million iPads in the US alone. Again that is based on the survey numbers. But let me show you some of the headlines for the survey - Starting with the one from the Company Retrevo that actually put this survey together.

Retrevo - "Apple iPad hoopla fails to convince Buyers"

PC World - "iPad study the more you know the less you want one"

CNET - "Survey - Majority of People don't want an iPad"

The NextWeb - "Only 9% to buy iPad? Polling shows weak demand for Apple Tablet"

Yup those are the titles of the blog posts out there all from the same survey data I just spun a different way. I think Apple if they even bothered reading the post from Retrevo was doing cartwheels because 37% or 30% or 11% or even 9% interested in the iPad and / or wanting to get one - is really really good and higher than their current market share for Mac's. Yet Every and I mean Every Post on these results was negative and coming to the conclusion the iPad will be a failure or not a significant player in the market. I think looking at these numbers nothing could be further from the truth. But then again there are Lies, Damn Lies and Blog Post titles from Retrevo.  Comments are welcome below.