Handheld paradigm shift

Today is the release date for Apple’s new iPad. While many pooh-poohed the iPad upon it’s announcement, Apple Stores are today mobbed with people lined-up to buy one.

For all of the punditry stating that it is “nothing more than an overgrown iPhone” or iPod Touch, a surprising number of people have decided to cough-up the dollars -and whatever other currency you can imagine- to be one of the first to own what I believe will start a landslide of change in mobile computing.

What Microsoft was unable to do with the release of their Tablet PC initiative 10 years ago, Apple will accomplish, partly because the market has changed (thanks, iPhone!) and partly because they’ve managed to get most of the equation right. You average person does NOT want a desktop version of an operating system to drag around outside their home or office. They don’t want viruses and trojans tagging along for the ride, they don’t want (or need) full office computer functionality on the run.

While the iPad WILL run over 145,000 iPhone apps out of the gate, it’s the made-for-iPad apps that will show the true utility of this device, despite the cries from geeks who cling to GUI-over-DOS (Windows),  something which your average Joe and Jane really don’t care about. For all of the derision that Steve Jobs takes form the PC crowd, the ungeek masses just want a device that works. Instant-on, simplified mobile computing on a device that’s not to small and not too large.

While the iPhone sold about 250,000 units the first year, the iPad is projected to sell 8-10 MILLION units this year, and that’s in a shortened year of just eight months. If this projection proves true, then Apple will be successful in defining the slate-computing market in must the same way they defined the smart-phone market. All smart-phones are compared, at least in passing, to the iPhone. My prediction is that the same will hold true for slate computers, whether they be from HP, Dell or anyone else.

To paraphrase a Civil War general, “he who gets there firstest with the mostest wins”. And this is true in product development and market as much as it is in war. One year from now the landscape of mobile computing will be completely changed. Mark my words…