Apple iPad launched - Net.Matters - January 2010

After much speculation in the technology industry, Apple has finally launched its iPad - a slimline tablet offering all the applications of the iPhone and incorporating additional features and functionality.

The iPad aims to change the way we use the internet, listen to music, read books online and watch films, by building in touch-screen technology, all housed in a sleek (1/2” thick), lightweight (1.5lb) tablet form (9.7” display).  Steve Jobs was reported as saying that those familiar with the iPhone would already know how to use the iPad and access its features.  Apple's aim is dominate the tablet market in the same way as the iPod and the iPhone have and the basic model will retail at $499 (£310).

As reported on TimesOnline, at the iPad's launch, Steve Jobs said: “The iPad is the best browsing experience you have ever had; iPad creates and defines an entirely new category of devices that will connect users with their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

Users will be able to access applications as per the iPhone in landscape or portrait form and will be able to connect to wireless keyboards (the device itself will have a virtual keyboard).  Apple has signed up with 5 publishers to produce an online bookshop and hope that the launch of iBooks will increase the popularity of the tablet - enabling people to read books digitally.

The iPad will come with 12 preloaded applications (including iTunes) and users will be able to download third party applications designed for both the iPhone and the iPad specifically - Apple's app division head, Scott Forstall predicts the iPad will be “a whole other gold rush for developers.”

Some critics argue that there may not be a market for yet another device which sits between smartphones, laptops and netbooks.  CCS Insight was quoted on the BBC site as saying the iPad was “a supersize iPod Touch that would get little interest if not from Apple.”  Yet other analysts are more optimistic - an analyst from Gartner Research: "Tablets have been around for a long time and tablets have failed for a long time.  This is a winning product."

Yet users are expected to rush to buy the iPad.  Surveys prior to its release, reported that over 50% of consumers questioned would buy the iPad - without knowing its retail price.  

Still, Apple can afford to be smug - as reported on the BBC News site, Apple has announced a 50% increase in profits and in the last quarter of 2009, net income rose to $3.38bn - from $2.26bn the previous year.