iPad Killers?

“Not since Moses came down from Mount Sinai has there been such
excitement about a tablet. Launched in April, the Apple iPad was an
overnight sensation. Anyone would think that it was the first
tablet device ever made, but in fact they have been around for
ages. Not that most people were aware of them. The first
commercially available tablet, the GRiDPad (based on MS-DOS)
appeared back in 1989. Other devices followed and by the early
2000s the tablet was being touted as the ‘next big thing’. It
didn’t happen then, possibly because the technology of the time
wasn’t up to creating the sort of user-friendly internet media
tablets envisioned. And so the tablet market continued to be a
niche one: before the launch of the iPad, it accounted for a mere
one per cent of the personal computer market.

“The iPad launch changed all that. All that frenzied media
coverage has finally made consumers aware of the tablet form
factor. Surveys by Forrester Research showed that by June, 95 per
cent of consumers were aware of the iPad. They might not have known
they needed, or wanted, a tablet before, but plenty have been
buying them.

“With over 3.5 million iPads sold to date – Apple CEO
Steve Jobs boasting “we’ve sold one every three seconds since we
launched it” – and ABI Research forecasting a total of 11
million media tablet shipments in 2010, it’s no wonder that most
OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) want a slice of the
action.”

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