By now, you’ve heard the near-hysteric hype, the prognosticating and the inevitable backlash against Apple’s latest bold new product, the iPad.
But if you’re bearish on Apple’s attempt to reinvigorate the tablet market, we suggest you examine Apple’s track record. To recap, in the last 20 years or so, Steve Jobs & Friends have been remarkably successful at creating huge new markets out of whole cloth – including the user-friendly PC, the portable MP3 player, the touch screen-enabled smart phone, the App economy – each of which has had profound effects on a myriad of other industries. (Does anyone remember the recording industry before the iPod?).
The expectations for the iPad may be a tad more muted than the iPhone’s, but (and this is a big but) we’d like to argue that Apple’s entering a new market at least as important than the quality or success of its actual product.