iPad 2 and Others

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iPad 2 and Others

Apple’s event today confirmed many rumors floating around about iPad 2. It’s thinner. It’s lighter. It’s faster.

We think that iPad 2 will cause a huge surge in tablet sales not only for Apple, but for its competitors. It’s the buzz around the product and Apple’s marketing that will push the tablet segment to new heights this year. Publishers won’t be questioning whether tablets are contenders or pretenders. They’ll be wondering which ones to focus on.

Here’s our advice.

iPad 2

Recommending you focus energy on iPad 2 goes without saying. iPad 2 has almost 90% marketshare depending on which source you pull the data from. While the competition is going to soak up some marketshare, iPad 2 will remain the number 1 tablet device for the foreseeable future because its hardware is so innovative and ahead of the competition. Substantially thinner and lighter than the competition… that’s a very big deal because weight is a significant problem with tablet computers. A problem Apple has solved, more so now, with the iPad 2.

We said that if Apple could get iPad 2 down to 1.25 lbs., it would be a sweet spot. That was based on our own user testing with all kinds of different tablets and eReaders. We don’t expect any general purpose tablet computer like the iPad to be as light as a Kindle or Sony eReader… but 1.5 lbs. got a tad heavy as in iPad 1 when reading for extended periods of time.

I think everybody will agree with Jobs when they deploy iPad 2. Just a few points of a pound in this weight class is a big difference. With the tablet form factor, the amount of pull on the wrists and arms for extended reading periods can cause tension in that area. It’s simple physics. Holding a tablet with both hands like you would hold a book open to read causes the wrists and forearms to shoulder much of the weight of the tablet. A classic lever action. The weight of the tablet pulls the wrists and forearms down. Comparatively, the wrists are fairly weak joints. Small changes in weight can add up to a big difference in both imagined and real tension on that area.

Add the 33% thinner design over iPad 1, making it easier to grip, and people are going to rave over how light and thin it feels. As associated with the action of reading, all this adds up to a lot of excitement from us here at liquidpubs.

Other Tablets

Where we think Apple is slipping a bit is with their software, and that’s where the competition comes in. While they don’t have quite as innovative hardware, so far, they have strong offerings. From Motorola XOOM’s 1 GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, to HP-Palm’s touchstone wireless charging technology, there are other options out there besides the iPad. It’s webOS and Android 3.0 you should also focus your attention on. These are multi-tasking, tablet-oriented mobile operating systems whereas iOS hasn’t really evolved into a tablet-oriented system yet. It’s good for the iPhone, but when it’s put next to webOS on a tablet, or Android 3.0 on a tablet, you can see how HP-Palm was right: “Multi-tasking was not an afterthought on webOS”. On iOS, it sort of was.

We expect big things from iOS 5: its release date, however, is unknown. Until then, by Apple not releasing iOS 5 with iPad 2, they’ve given the competition a fighting chance. HP-Palm with webOS and Google with Android 3.0 are excellent platforms to develop content for. You should thus focus energy on these platforms in addition to iOS.

We’ll know more about BlackBerry when the PlayBook hits the market.

2011 is definitely the year of the tablet.

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This author's website address is http://www.liquidpubs.com

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