The iiiPad

Apple's Steve Jobs released the new iPad last night. My guess is that this may be a historic dud; partly because the PR buildup was so great. The iPad turned out to be nothing special. Even Jobs knew it--he stressed too many times how "phenomenal" it was.

Is there room for a device sized in between the laptop and the PDA? Only, I think, if it is an efficient tool for reading books—that's the only niche not served by either of those. Otherwise, being just a bit easier to carry around than a laptop is not going to convince many to go out and buy a third device. This is demonstrated, I think, by the commercial failure so far of both netbooks and tablet PCs.

As Jobs himself said, a successful middle entry must do somthing significantly better than either. And the iPad does not. It is just a very big iPod.

Its one opening was, I think, as an ereader. That is the niche, and Amazon's Kindle has been doing well with it. But despite Jobs' claims, I'm confident the iPad will not fly as an ereader: being backlit, it is just not going to be comfortable to read from for extended times, any more than a laptop is now. Serious readers are not going to buy it.

The one way to overtake Amazon, given their superb ability to offer content, is to offer a reflected light technology with colour—Kindle's eInk weak link. Only trouble is, that technology is not yet available. It is just possible, I suppose, that Jobs is releasing the iPad now with a plan to upgrade to a colour technology under development, but not ready yet. To be in a position to compete with Amazon in a year's time or so, he needs in the meantime to be building a respectable library of epublications to offer. Hard to do without some sort of reader for them; certainly hard to do while keeping the enterprise secret. So the current iPad might be no more than a stalking horse.

Yet even if something like this is the plan, I think it's risky; the ePad may get a bad rep by then, and become too un-cool to recover. Since cool is Apple's main selling point, this gets tough for them. And how sure can Jobs be that they will arrive at a decent colour display before Amazon, or some third player, does?

There's a decent chance the iPad could gain a rep reminiscent of the Edsel. Those with memories long enough will know it has happened to Apple before, and that Steve Jobs' marketing instincts are not infallible. Anyone else remember the Apple III?





If I were holding Apple stock, I'd sell.