"Happy iPad day everyone!", said an AppleBlog tweet a moment ago.
I was on French radio yesterday discussing my thoughts about the iPad, in a heated discussion. I might be right, might be wrong, but here are my arguments for it to become a revolution; and I'm putting them up here for future reference ;) make sure to make fun of me if I'm wrong !
So why is the iPad going to become a revolution ?
- the iPad is not just a computer : I believe Apple made a mistake during its launch Keynote on the iPad about positioning it as a 1) computer in the 2) netbook category challenger, between laptops and phones. Remember Apple changed its name from "Apple Computer Inc." to "Apple Inc." a while ago ? Apple is not about being computers anymore, but about devices. Indeed, Jobs in the same keynote stated that Apple had become the largest mobile company in the world (including phones, laptops, etc.). It's interesting since Apple has also become the 4th 3rd largest US publicly traded company, behind Exxon, Wal-Mart and Microsoft (updated). We are talking about a serious player here to change an industry, and by extension the world.
Therefore, all criticism to the Apple iPad lacking features that belong to a computer should be taken with a grain of salt: no multitasking (actually it can, since Music can play in the background), no webcam (well, it seems a v2 will have one), no USB support for devices (the device is there, it's only a matter of allowing other device manufacturers... just an economical ecosystem problem), lousy on-screen keyboard (well, I still believe the keyboard on an iPhone is just great compared to Android), no support Flash (remember that is a PROPRIETARY format, but Apple is going full-speed for standard HTML5), some features lacking in their professional apps (such as no rules in the built-in email software : so what? the next version will have them...)...
All this said, the iPad should have been introduced to the market as a competitor to a great invention, the Kindle. But... with colour ! with multimedia support ! and... it also supports other applications to extend the device to other usages. What? it can already run 170.000 apps that people love on the iPhone... That would have been a killer introduction, and taken away all that criticism. (update: Rafi has great insights into the evolution of computers, I like particularly the bottom-up approach from phones thought instead of a top-down approach from computers)
- the iPad is not another device for the CURRENT users of computers. They already have tons of devices to play with such as desktops, laptops, phones, etc. It's targeting a whole range of new users who do not already own their OWN device. Specifically, after the initial craze from early adopters, this device is targeted at expanding the marketshare of Apple elsewhere (remember the Blue Ocean strategy?) where it is not yet mainstream with computers.
1) senior people, ie 65+ years old. They need simple applications if they had not been exposed to computers earlier. They don't need Powerpoint, spreadsheets, word processsors (although Apple is selling iPad specific iWork apps). They want to experience leisure: books, magazines, music, maybe browser the web in a fun way, look at pictures... and they have expendable income. Great target group. (again, Rafi mentions the parallel with ADSL - it's asymmetric in behavior. There's a rule out there about 1% producing, 9% interacting, 90% just consuming)
2) kids. Have you noticed how comfortable kids from 3 years old onwards are with the iPhone. Intuitive, native. Publishers got it, check this Penguin Books video. Software vendors get it. Check this game by FreshPlanet. And of course, parents are willing to spend premium money on their kids, to educate them, in the same way they used to buy an encyclopaedia for them. It's a brilliant move by Apple by the way. Once you get used to Apple's interface, ecosystem, design... would you ever want to go elsewhere and experience less than beautiful devices or software. A bit like hooking you up early when you are a tobacco company.
3) lastly, most families still have just one computer at home. So your spouse doesn't have one. now he/she will have one. definitively, since it's not meant to be a "serious" computer, just a web/multimedia/entertainment device. Remember them just 2 years ago, still using their first or second mobile phone? a brick from Nokia or other vendor, only using it for voice and text ? and now, when you look at them, they are happily browsing the web away, doing tons of things on their iPhone, consuming tons of data. BUT noone calls that their mobile computer (like Nokia once did). It's just their new phone, that does TONS of things extra. I believe this is how Apple should have introduced its iPad : a fantastic eReader, that happens to do tons of things. And by the way, critics mentioned Apple had only signed up 60K books for launch, vs. 400K books on the Kindle. Well, the Kindle app launched for iPad today. There goes that criticism.
- a family will own more than one iPad. This is a prediction I have been debating for a few days. I have a digital frame from Parrot that I have been playing with for a few weeks. It displays my pictures from Flickr randomly every few seconds. Great way to see my big archive of pictures; but it's not programmable, I can't extend it to see for example my PRIVATE pictures of my kids for example. It makes total sense though as a picture frame in my private living room (a tool to select which portfolio to display, etc. It could be done with a third-party app, that redistributes a new RSS, etc.). In addition, this frame comes with 2 other apps, that are useless to me. Why not more apps ? why isn't it an open platform for developers? and by the way it costs the same price as an entry-level price for an iPad. Hence this weird thought : I have 4 computers in my home. I own 2 phones, 2 TV sets. My household could sustain a 3rd TV set (I actually stream TV on my son's computer). Probably a few more phones. Hence, shouldn't I be having a picture frame in every room, connected to the Internet, that could do many other things ? Indeed. (update: Benoit said something along these lines when the iPad was introduced)
I believe there is a target market of a few iPads to be just that in every household : 2-3 picture frames in your living room, dining room, bedroom, TV room, home office... right there recharging, acting as picture frames, but becoming great devices once you need to / feel like reading something, interacting with the web, checking a fact, answering a voice (Skype) call ! I believe the real difference between web 1.0 and web 2.0 was when we moved away from dial-up (30 seconds to connect) to permanent connections to the internet with broadband. The iPad is bringing another revolution : access to information in a second by just extending your arm to grab a device, vs. going to a computer, and launching an app.
Of course there is an issue with the price of each device. Of course. but the market will take care of that : prices will come down when the iPad 2.0 comes out (well, you can buy the 1.0 cheaper), when competitors try to imitate this tablet's success, when middle men (think mobile companies, retailers) give them away or at a fraction of a price, bundled with something else. There was an interesting tweet the other day : someone said he never had to update the hardware of his phone (iPhone) since he bought it 2 years ago (because of software upgrades), but he would have had to with any other brand. Finally, these vision of access to your own environment from multi-devices brings in great opportunities in the cloud, and software vendors to give you great experiences from anywhere, whatever the device (more on this another day - multi-device syncing in the cloud).
- Marc Benioff wrote a great piece on the impact of the iPad on the cloud. Actually in that article he pointed how touch was changing the UI. Indeed, he's right : the text mode interaction we had with a keyboard during the 60s, 70s was changed when graphical UIs came out with windows and mouse controls. It's time for a new UI paradigm change. It's about touch. I don't mean your finger replacing the mouse pointer. It's about rethinking interfaces, interactions. The iPhone introduced this : see all apps use the same elements such as lists, big buttons, etc. It's absolutely not a web or desktop app interface redesign with bigger buttons. I believe indeed we need to invent new ways to interact with graphical interfaces with touch. A bit like the minority report movie or like in this Jeff Han video. And remember, people are very comfortable using this touch experience on their iPhone. The iPad brings a much bigger touch surface: it will be used as a great input device for example for controlling MIDI instruments, other equipment (think remote control) or just simply interacting with our environment (think how "pinch" has already changed our way of interacting - so many people try that on the Kindle that doesn't support it...). And of coursenew games make use of the touch interface ! I also believe that touch will expand beyond tablets, and become a standard UI to the world surrounding us : the Microsoft Surface table is an example. The CNN TV set for displaying election results is another. There is a start-up out there transforming any window into a display with touch !
- Finally, there are a number of predictions about the number of iPads sold this year. Anywhere between 8 and 10 million. That is a small number compared to recent numbers for netbooks (50 millions), smartphones, etc. The real impact of iPad success cannot be measured on this number alone. Most if not all of AT&T's growth in the past few quarters comes from the iPhone (talk about impact in terms of churn reduction, ARPU, etc.). The whole mobile industry has copied the iPhone model with its AppStore (think Android Market, GetJar, what Samsung is trying to do with Bada), it's graphical UI, its form factor. Almost everything but its exclusive business model with operators (hard to copy and rejected by EU courts). Finally with less than 100m devices sold (iPhone and iPod touch), Apple has revolutionized totally the mobile market. with its beautiful laptops, it has over 90% marketshare in device over $1,000). Its approach to multimedia (iTunes Music store with movies, TV films, Music), has revived shrinking industries. Expect it to do the same in the book / publishing industries, and even software development market for casual apps (KPCB launched a new $100m fund for iPad apps this week; the mobile apps market being estimated at $17.5b by 2012...). Another interesting metric would have been to know how many people came to the Apple world though the iPhone, iPod, enabling Apple to post recently their best quarter ever in revenue and profit in history !
