The Third Screen
Apple launched iPad on April 3 with selling massive 300,000 devices on day 1 itself. A brilliant 9.7” LED touch screen device very similar to iPhone (a bigger iPhone without phone maybe 
) is costing around $499. It is expected that by 2010 end, Apple would be selling approx. 5 Million iPads. Keeping aside the natural buzz that any Apple product receives nowadays, it is a significant milestone in computing world as it looks like Apple has created a much awaited “third screen”.
Apple iPad showing YouTube videos
What’s a third screen? It’s something which is neither a laptop nor a mobile. It is bigger than a smartphone and much lighter and portable than a laptop. It has 9.7” screen (which is comparable to smaller netbooks available today) and it weighs only 650 grams (against netbooks weighing in KGs) and it supports 10 hours of battery (wow ). It supports WiFi and 3G data networks, a camera, multi-touch screen. And what can it run? Anything that iPhone does. Today there are around 150,000 iPhone applications available on iTunes that it can run in addition to some 1500 specifically created for iPad. That means everything. We have hundreds of social networking, games, office and productivity applications available today. All will run seamlessly on iPad. In addition to it, Apple has launched iBook Apps which will facilitate e-book reading which will be again sold via iTunes.
Who can use it? Anyone, who needs a laptop for non-developer purpose; students, journalists, salesmen, executives all can use it. A laptop even though a netbook, is still a laptop. It is bulky, have a pathetic LCD screen, needs a keyboard and runs lower or startup versions of Windows OS. We can even see tomorrow if schoolchildren start taking their iPad instead of notebooks and textbooks to school. It is definitely a netbook killer.
With iTunes, iPad is also a potential portable DVD player and Digital photo frame killer. It can play 10 hours of high quality Video which you can buy/rent from iTunes store. Why need to buy DVDs and carry bulky players while you are travelling anymore?
Apple now has 3 massive revenue generating devices – iPod, iPhone and now iPad. And then it has its behemoth application and content delivery infrastructure through iTunes supporting all three devices. This machinery is generating almost 40 Billion Dollars of revenue annually!! Apple has immediately announced iPhone OS 4 availability in June 2010 which will run on its existing iPhone 3GS devices. It will include iBook application. That’s the power of this iPod-iPhone-iPad platform in terms of extending business from one to other. It is complete different business model than Microsoft’s traditional software licensing model.
iPad has opened a new chapter in computer industry. Whether or not iPad will be ubiquitous, its clone devices would surely. We already have an Indian company named Notion Ink launching its similar product in CES 2010 called Adam, which is powered by Android. Overall, we can definitely see more and more players jumping into this market, which will definitely drive innovation upwards and prices downwards.
Notion Ink's Adam