Nikkei Electronics Asia --September 2010
Cover Story: Tablets Are Not PCs [Part2]
Hardware's Not Enough: The Key is the App Distribution Platform

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Aug 31, 2010 23:57 Toshiyuki Omori, Phil Keys, Yasushi Uchida

Continued from the previous part

The iPad has become a hit by eliminating many of the problems people have using PCs. As far as hardware goes it isn't much different than a netbook, and the really significant difference is the application distribution platform it offers.

Why does the iPad sell? One of the biggest reasons is how hard it is to use Windows-based PCs.

Fig.1 The Post-Netbook Revolution Continues
Netbooks introduced two revolutionary ideas to the notebook PC industry: price collapse and limited application. Windows-based netbooks, however, inherit all the usability problems of PCs. The iPad resolves most of them.

The notebook PC first appeared in 1989, and brought with it the concept of carrying your PC around with you-portability (Fig.1). The next big evolutionary step was the netbook in 2007. As a machine to browse Web sites and handle e-mail, it leveraged its incredibly low pricetag (50,000 yen or less) to rapidly create a huge market.

The netbook, however, inherits all of the problems inherent in the notebook PC. Unable to escape complaints that it took too long to boot, that battery drive time was too short, and that the user interface (UI) still relied on a non-intuitive mouse or touchpad, it was classified as a hard-to-use notebook with a low price, and market growth began to flatten out in only about two years. According to Hidetoshi Himuro, Director, IT&FPD Market Researchof NPD Japan Ltd. of Japan, "The manufacturers should have been able to make a variety of proposals designed to take advantage of the low price, but in fact they merely tried to sell it as a cheaper PC. That killed netbook growth."

A device that resolved these drawbacks in the notebook PC should sell, the manufacturers though, and proposed a wide range of possibilities that are now called smartbooks or mobile Internet devices (MID). It will not be easy to destroy the near-monopoly of the PC, because of the enormous software resources it possesses, including office application suites.

In the last few years smartphones, like the iPhone from Apple and the Android-based Xperia from Japanese-Swedish joint venture Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, have grown rapidly as terminals for certain PC applications. Smartphones are designed to be carried at all times, however, imposing a variety of restrictions including small, hard-to-view screens. The iPad, on the other hand, sacrifices portability to some extent for a larger screen.

A Generation that Only Knows Touch

Developed as an extension of smartphones, not PCs, the iPad was born with a variety of features including instant-start, a 10-hour battery drive time and an intuitive, multi-touch UI. Thanks to the groundbreaking iPhone that led the way many users were already familiar with multi-touch operation, which was a big assist for the new product.

The iPad is about the same size as a netbook, but it has no keyboard, and as a result it is used far more for browsing (consuming content) than for input (creating content). In that sense, perhaps it is closer to the TV than a PC.

The content that can be handled on an iPad is the same as for a PC, but the iPad provides immense value by being able to access new information very, very quickly. One engineer at a communication carrier says he uses his iPad to check the bio for the actors in an upcoming TV show immediately, without having to wait for his notebook PC to boot up. And he adds that the immediacy of the information is sometimes enough to get him to purchase a film with that actor on digital video disc (DVD) right then and there.

While the iPad is ill-suited at present to business applications like spreadsheets, it does have the potential to almost entirely replace the PC in the future. And it may reach an entirely new user group that has never used PCs. For children who don't have the preconceptions about how to use computers, learning touch panel operation will be a lot easier than learning the keyboard. Kanae Maita, Principal Analystat Gartner Japan, Ltd. of Japan explains "Just like the younger generations today use their mobile phones for just about everything, it is quite possible that a generation in the near future will be 'touch native,' with experience in touch panel operation only."