To Own or Not to Own the Damn iPad?

Here is another report validating my previous coverage about whether iPad is a necessity or not.

The consumer electronics shopping site, Retrevo is reporting that 53% of about 1000 respondents surveyed in their Pulse Report are not interested in buying any type of tablet.

More than 20% of those surveyed — or one in five — said they plan to buy an iPhone this year. When it comes to the iPad, however, 52% of those who have yet to purchase one say that they don’t want one, and 38% find it too pricey. Only 10% indicated that they are waiting for a good excuse before they buy one.

But in a separate question, 40% of consumers who own or plan to own an e-reader indicate that they will buy an iPad this year.

Also, more than half (53%) of the 47% who are interested in buying a tablet say they would buy an Android-based tablet over an iPad if it was less an expensive. 33% would ditch the iPad if Verizon was the carrier — a somewhat perplexing stat given that the iPad is not a phone, but perhaps data plans are just as important to technology consumers these days. In contrast, 16% of this respondent pool said that nothing would influence them to buy an Android-based tablet over an iPad.

Owning the iPad thing is getting kind of  frustrating to me. Do I need an iPad? No! Do I want one? Hard to answer. I think they are really neat devices and I’m impressed with the speed, but I just can’t justify it. If i had one, I’d likely do as I do now with my Android… when nothing on TV is interesting, I’d sit there and read email, look at some web stuff, check Facebook, Twitter. I thought that if I got one, I’d wait until a camera is added so that video conferencing via Skype was possible.