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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

February - 2010 - issue > Tech Tracker

iPhone to iPad - Apple's iMpact slows down

K.C.Deepika
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
K.C.Deepika
The buzz of the revolutionary tablet turned a sour potato, once Apple unveiled iPad. CEO Steve Jobs maintained iPad's supremacy to laptops and smartphones, yet the wow-factor of Apple's previous launches, the iPhone and iPod went missing. It had its immediate impact on Apple's shares, which dropped 3.5 percent after unveiling iPad, contrary to the one percent gain just prior to the launch.

The 9.7-inch touch screened iPad, is half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds and comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in. It has all the functionality of the iPod Touch, and it's also a web tablet, e-book reader, and a so-called netbook replacement. Despite that the tablet's influence loses ground as critics pinpoint the lack of multi-tasking to be a big drawback. Moreover, positioning itself as a Kindle killer, iPad has removed the comfort of e-ink display via adopting backlit LCD screen, which is too bright for extended e-book reading. Even the 10-hour battery life compared to the 20 or 30 hours of a normal e-book, draws a yawning impact. However, Apple brings a much larger collection than Kindle's 400,000 books as in addition to the iBooks, it runs the Kindle app to access the iPhone plus any other e-bookstore app. As a netbook, the iPad loses in terms of portability, because you'll have to carry around two parts (iPad and keyboard dock) which sounds impractical.

The device's impact is limited due to the missing parts like camera, USB, Flash and High-Definition Multimedia Interface, features that any computing-gadget buff expects for everyday-functions. The Flash unavailability daunts iPad's 'web-tablet' definition which would disrupt internet content view, and the camera being a part of any personal gadget, the removal of it dims the enthusiasm of the normal user.

Analysts predict $499 price tag for iPad is the only criterion that may push its sales to somewhere between 1-7 million. Yet tablets like HP's slate whose price is expected to be $500 and Freescale's new tablet at $199 may mar those predictions too. Amidst the negative airs, Jobs may now step back to the drawing table to introduce the new version addressing all the grievances.
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