The new tablets are also expected to give the iPad, which has had the market largely to itself, a run for its money. R.I.M., which makes BlackBerry phones, and H.P. have long relationships with corporate technology buyers. For its part, Apple is hoping to stay ahead of competitors with a new version of the iPad, which may be unveiled as soon as next month.
The company, which sold nearly 15 million iPads in the nine months after the release of the device, won’t say how many were bought by businesses. But during a conference call with investors and analysts in January, the company said more than 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies were using or testing the iPad, an increase from 65 percent three months earlier. Among those companies, said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, are JPMorgan Chase, Sears Holdings and DuPont.
This trend came from the consumer side, in what I believe is a pure product of the effacement between work and home today. We need a device we can carry around to read all of our emails, not just the business and not just the home messages.
To a large extent the iPad’s entry into the business world was paved by the iPhone. When Apple first released the iPhone, it lacked capabilities to link up securely with corporate e-mail systems. But as executives tried the device, they often preferred it to their BlackBerrys and other smartphones, and soon began demanding support for them.
Apple gradually added capabilities, and the iPhone became standard issue in scores of large businesses.
Companies that waited two or three years to support the iPhone began adopting the iPad just weeks after its release.
So before long we'll all own a tablet and a lot of us will give up PCs. Per these ads, which were on the page with the NY Times article, there's a bunch of sub-$200 Android tablets by early makers that have GPS and cameras in them already. Whether they move the media as sweetly as the iOS, we'll see if they become an acceptable alternative. iTunes integration?
Most of all, I'm struck by the sea change in media collecting -- it doesn't make sense any more. Why own DVDs of all your favorite movies when you can steam them on Netflix for a negligible monthly fee (especially compared to cable or satellite). And the tablet is simply the created media consumption tool ever invented. It's all right there on a single convenient plastic slab.
Long live the new flesh.
1 comment:
I've seen rumors recently of a videodrome remake.
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