The Apple Beat: The iPad in Focus

Original illustration by David Mead

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

We're a day away from the iPad related Apple announcement (stay tuned here for our livestream as well as Twitter updates on @gadjosevilla). We expect the focus of the tech world to be on the iPad for the next few weeks and while many are excited about the new specs, features, functionalities and possibilities. I thought I'd cover some facts about the iPad.

• The iPad was supposed to come before the iPhone - The iPhone was the device that changed everything but before Apple launched the iconic smartphone in 2007, it was actively working on a tablet.  Steve Jobs revealed this secret at the D8 Conference some years ago. Jobs had an idea of a multi-touch display you could type on, and six months later his team had a prototype display to show him. After handing it off to Apple user interface experts who “got the inertia rolling,” Jobs realized, “My god, we can build a phone out of this,” and shelved the tablet.

• An estimated 55 Million iPads have been sold to date. Not bad for a product that is barely 2 years old.

• Aside from revolutionizing Books (Amazon, Kobo, Nook, iBooks), the iPad is bringing Magazines (Zinio, Newsstand) and Newspapers (PressReader) to a portable and friendlier (to trees, at least) medium. Apple's new Textbooks platform could change the way students buy, carry and consume educational texts.

• While initially criticized as a "content consumption' device, the iPad is quickly becoming a viable content creation device and a growing computing platform. Some of the major applications like Adobe Photoshop Touch and the long rumoured Microsoft Office for iPad will help make the iPad a viable notebook replacement.

• iPad adoption is up 80 % in Enterprise - The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the iPad is being deployed by 65 of the Fortune 100 companies. "For now, the iPad and iPad 2 remain the de facto enterprise tablet standard -- especially when it comes to the large company-driven deployments in verticals such as Financial Services, Business and Professional Services, Life Sciences, and Healthcare,"  said a report from Good Technology adding that the Financial Services sector in particular had an iPad adoption rate four times higher than any other industry.

• As a new iPad model surfaces, the market for used iPad 2's  is exploding. The resale market is being flooded by iPad 2's and we expect this to continue (and asking prices to go down) soon as the next Apple tablet is announced.

• We can rag about Apple's closed ecosystem but the walled garden's biggest benefit is security. This security makes the iPad ideal for military use in the field as well as by the Commanding Officers.