TAL

Technology Adoption Lifecycle

This theory breaks the population up into groups based on how fast they adopt new technology. The data represent a normal curve in idealized terms (shown above).

There are five groups: Innovators, Early adopters, Early majority, Late majority and Laggards.

I count myself in the second group, Early adopters. I'm not, despite how much I write about these things and how much I love electronic gadgets, an Innovator. They are the guys who get beta hardware and hack it to work right. Or wait in line for a week to be the first one in their city to own something. I don't do those things. But I do a lot of research and I usually know if I want something before it comes out. I have no aversion to technological change. I'm zero friction as they say. When it comes to tech, I'm not too sentimental either. I realize that's odd for my generation. Zach's generation will have their own calibration for these things.

 

Most people are in the Early or Late majority.

 

But an odd thing happened last April, something the TAL model cannot explain. For some reason or reasons, unknown to marketing researchers, the iPad wiped this model out. It immediately grabbed large chunks of all five groups. Even many Laggards (think grandpa, or your crazy uncle who says he'll never use a computer and eventually someone gives him an old one from 1985) jumped on the iPad bandwagon, and right away.

That is a very rare thing in technology. The TAL model has worked very well in the past. Maybe we need a new model. Or maybe the iPad is an anomaly. Time will tell.

 

n the meantime, the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen where iPad is assembled continues to crank out 3 million of them every month. That's almost 70 units every minute, or 1.6 per second for you Laggards who don't yet own a calculator :)