The hype and reality of the iPad
As usual, a great marketing campaign from Apple. It is the best at whipping up industry hype – in one go the whole world found out all about iPad without Apple having to spend a cent on advertising.
It certainly is a terrific device – a great gadget and very, vey sexy to look at. All the geeks want one straight away, but I am not sure how many others will follow. For the more rational people there might be just a few things that need to be fixed – such as a camera, better multitasking, better Internet connection and more openness towards other applications. Also there are many alternative notebooks and tablets well suited for specific markets already available.
But this is also an opportunity to address the issue of openness. As we have discussed previously (http://www.buddeblog.com.au/are-google-microsoft-and-apple-the-next-utilities-in-telecoms/), companies that provide great products and services to the market obviously get attention, support and buy-in from the consumers. And it is quite reasonable that those companies should reap financial rewards for their efforts. In competitive markets others will follow and try to replicate their success and (in competitive markets at least) the next phase will lead either to competing open systems and/or to the innovator opening up.
But in non-competitive markets the second phase could result in new monopolies that nobody really wants.
In the end openness in mass markets will be the natural state of affairs, either through competition or regulation.
The early adopters want the new product at any cost, but the rest of the market may choose to wait for a more open solution. Technology companies in general have taught customers not to trust them too much, since many products have failed or a better 2.0 model has been produced after the initial product.
I think that the smart phone/small computer market will be competitive enough to become a more open market.
Paul Budde
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February 4th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Paul, I think you have missed a key point with the iPad. This is a new generation of device that everyone is trying to pigeon hole as something else. It’s not a smartphone or a netbook or fully fledged computer. While it has familiar elements of all of those, it is actually the ideal personal device for someone to connect to the world. For the old, the young, the infirm and anyone whole just wants to focus on one simple useful task at a time, this removes the computer and lets the user focus on the content or task. Aren’t we describing the ideal way of connecting to services delivered to the home with minimal learning? Doesn’t this make it a much better way of accessing new broadband services for vast number of users? And this level of innovation is not being driven by open standards, it is being driven by a visionary company that understands that the whole ecosystem is the key to a great experience not the individual features of a specific piece of hardware. (It definitely needs a camera though)