iPad: What the...?

The big question for Apple: can you change one letter and still rule the world?

The company behind the revolutionary iPod mp3 player has just planted its flag deep in the stagnant tablet computer market and the emerging electronic book reader landscape. But is it a tablet? Is it a laptop? Is it for e-books? Is it just an inflated iPhone? What exactly is the Apple iPad?

Announced in January 2010, to mixed reviews among IT buffs and even rusted-on Apple fans, the Apple iPad is nevertheless set to revolutionise a number of emerging product markets, including tablet computers, digital book readers and Apple’s own iPhone and iPod Touch products.

Apple iPad mobile device?

A genuinely revolutionary product, the iPad defies description. Even calling it a mobile device is controversial; at around 24cm x 19cm, there are few pockets yet invented that it would slide in to. But its almost-A4 size does point to some uses that are clearly front-and-centre in the minds of Apple’s strategists.

iPad and the Kindle e-Reader

It was well over two years after the release of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader that Apple head honcho Steve Jobs announced the imminent release of the Apple iPad. But – if previous Apple products are anything to go by – it will be a genuinely disruptive game changer.

There were mp3 players before the iPod, but after its release, that product soon became synonymous with mp3 players generally. There were 3rd-party applications written for mobile phones before, but nothing could have prepared us for the massive explosion in functionality following the release of the iPhone (and especially the SDK or Software Development Kit).

And Amazon has already created a small-but-growing market for e-books; a market that has already got sections of traditional publishing (and especially newspaper proprietors) in a fearsome lather.

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