Has Steve Jobs hit another home run with his new iPad? Well if we're talking from a pure sales standpoint - according to this Business Week article - the iPad will be a huge hit! The article estimates that Apple will ship almost 2.7 million units by the end of this year. Those are big numbers and in comparison with the Kindles estimated 3 million units sold since its release in 2007, according to this Las Vegas Review Journal article, the iPad would effectively over take the Kindle in just a few months.
I have owned a Kindle since 2008, have bought many books for it and I've enjoyed the e-ink reading experience. Also, since Amazon added PDF support to the Kindle, I have been able to take my massive and ever expanding ebook PDF library and read it on the go. Truthfully, I have never really enjoyed reading PDF documents on a screen. Reading my PDF ebook library on the Kindle has been, for me, a much better experience.
Though focusing on the the iPad as an ebook reader, and it's effect on the Kindle's future, is like sitting and focusing on the iPhone and how it's going to destroy Motorola's RZAR's market share. My iPhone is an incredible work tool. My Apps bring joy to my daughter... when she plays tic tac toe with me; 3G and Google allow me to find information quickly and easily. Yes the iPhone did destroy the RZAR's market, but that product, like the Kindle was a uni-tasker! The Kindle does a great job at what it does... downloading books on the fly, anywhere for $9.99 in a small, easy to carry, compact body.
The iPad will do that as well... and so much more. Just like my iPhone brought home my mobile phone, iTunes, email exchange and other Microsft features into one amazing package (and did it better than my previous Microsoft based mobile phone), the iPad will do the same and allow me to do away with my Kindle and maybe even my laptop as well.
What the iPad will do for us and how it we'll use it, is still left to be seen, but one thing for sure... the possibilities seem amazing and some of what I'm hearing is exciting. I've just read this article from Techcrunch.com on a new iPad APP from Nextflix that allows me to take my Netflix account, that I already use and watch on my Playstation, and watch my Netflix instant watch list on my iPad... that is huge. I can also go from watching my streaming Netflix movie on my flat screen at home, pause it and, supposedly, pick up it up on my iPad where I left off. Very exciting stuff!
Another amazing development is what's being called Cloud 2. Where Cloud 1 was type/click, Cloud 2 is touch; where Cloud 1 is Yahoo and Amazon and everything that they inspired, Cloud 2 is Facebook where all us are connected - always. Where Cloud 1 is location unknown, Cloud 2 is known and the iPad and other mobile connected, touch technologies will play a major roll in that human interface to Cloud 2.
In his excellent article Hello iPad. Hello Could 2, Mark Benioff, CEO and Chairman of Saleforce.com, describes all this Cloud 2 business in amazing detail and his vision for the future is all about the iPad and devices like it.
My business partner and CEO of Convergex Communications, Charles Boan, is starting to develop apps for use with our customers in medicine. More and more of our medical customers are moving to electronic and online medical records. However, many still use charts and hand write notes in them... many tell us that there portable touch screen laptops are sloppy at capturing their notes. Convergex sees the iPad and special medical apps designed to capture and easily move information to the cloud as an important business use of the iPad and devices like it.
With all that said and my obvious interest of owning an iPad, the question I get is... am I going to buy one right now? Well I have decided to wait and make my personal purchase for sometime in the future. In the meantime, Convergex will have one and we'll work on the development of apps on it from the get go; however, for me personally I'll wait for iPad version 2.0 to debut.
iPad, iWant one, but I will exercise patience at this moment.
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