What We Missed About iPAD

Print

No one and no product could have lived up to the hype that preceded the Apple iPad launch. Not even Steve Jobs who cranked up the hype machine in the first place.

Steve Jobs and iPad

Steve Jobs stood there on stage, iPad in hand like Moses with The Tablet, and a list of his own Commandments: Thou shall create a product category between smartphones and netbooks. Thou shall not have strange devices before you. Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s goods...

But this time, this very time when we knew what we wanted, when we knew what to expect...somehow it didn’t turn out to be the Second Coming we expected. (Actually for Steve it’s the Third Coming but why quibble?)

Yes, the Apple faithful didn’t break ranks. But plenty of journalists who try to make a living out of being sceptics certainly cranked out the critical articles: 10 Things Wrong with iPad, iPad No Kindle Killer, What iPad is Missing...

But it’s not about what iPad is “missing.” It’s about what we are missing.  And we’re missing the point. Almost all of us are just missing the whole point. And the consumer will soon prove us wrong.

This time deceived us because it looks familiar: Steve Jobs the Product Genius (from the original Genius bar) poised on stage, waving a piece of hardware That Will Change the World.

He did that performance with the Mac (but in those days not as many were listening). He pulled it off big-time with iPod. And he did it with iPhone.

What’s different? And why is iPad getting so much abuse?


We all really wanted to believe the hype, we wanted a device That Could Change the World. What Steve brought us was a clever re-positioning of the Tablet that Bill Gates wanted so badly for so many years. “It’s not a Tablet,” says Steve, waving his hand in a Jedi mind trick move...”It’s a whole new category.”

You see we fixate on the device, the product in Steve’s hands. Because that’s what we buy, that’s what we see, that’s what we touch and multi-touch...

But what we can’t see, smell or hear on stage is the most important part of the Steve Show. iPad is walking into the market at an affordable price ($499) and carrying one great sack of proven applications.

iPhone Apps

iPod had to prove iTunes. iPhone had to build the Apps Store.

iPad just strolls into our lives with both iTunes, iStore—plus iBooks which needs no heavy lifting because Kindle already pulled the weight up the hill.

iPad is a winner because it’s another form factor feeding into the world’s greatest and growing Apps platform: Apple. Steve Jobs has the ability to get industries like media, music and books to think big and go with Apple to market. He's driving the Content business.

And, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve heard it once, you’ve forgotten it a thousand times: software drives hardware sales. More specifically, APPS RULE.

It’s not that iPad will change the world. Even though Apple WILL sell millions of iPads in a record time. Yes, I think you couldn’t stop Apple from selling millions even if you attached a Swine Flu app.

It’s all about APPS. The devices will get less and less important until the cloud covers them all.

EDITOR'S NOTE ADDED: March 30th...The closer we get to actually having the product in the marketplace, the more everyone now realizes I had it right in early February. The iPAD is not for geeks: it's a mass market product that will depend heavily on its "ecosystem" appeal.

While Apple will make money off the sale of each iPad, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall estimates Apple will generate enough revenue from content sales equal to 10% of its iPad hardware sales by the end of this year and about 30% in 2011.

Clouds

It's all about recurring revenue from media/content. 16,700 iPhone apps have been certified as iPad-compatible so far. and more than more than 140,000 applications are racing up from behind. (For example, there have been more than 3 billion iPhone app downloads since the iPhone launched in mid-2007.)

Since I filed my WE'RE ALL WRONG ABOUT iPAD (in the early days when the press was disappointed and negative) the bandwagon has come to realise the true genius of bringing another form factor to tap the Apple content platform in the mass market.

Now WE'RE ALL RIGHT ABOUT iPAD and the stock analyst TREFIS even shows iPAD is already 4.3% of Apple's current stock price (even before product release.) Software drives hardware: it's an old rule. Live by it or die by it.

AppleStockPrice_MAR2010