Opinion: The iPad’s niche
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Apple’s shiny new tablet computer has inspired at least two memes among the commentariat: It’ll save the newspaper industry, and it’ll kill (fill in the blank). My guess is that both are wrong.
Let me start with the David Pogue caveat: We won’t really know where iPads will fit into the continuum of gadgets until after reviewers and consumers have taken them out for an extended spin. Still, I think it’s a mistake to assume that even a really slick-looking slate from the geniuses in Cupertino will suddenly enable newspaper publishers to generate meaningful revenue online.
For starters, it will take years to reach a critical mass of users. The iPhone passed the 20 million mark in two years, but it’s significantly cheaper than the iPad and its utility much more obvious. More important, the iPad doesn’t enable publishers to do anything they can’t already do online with PCs or with smartphones. The only difference I can see is the ability to show something that more closely resembles the current product (when holding the iPad in portrait mode). Would that lead more people to pay for a subscription? Really?
At today’s unveiling ...
... Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times showed off a very attractive version of his paper that was optimized for the iPad. The tablet’s touch screen makes it easy to navigate around the site and resize objects. Again, though, I have to ask whether such features will make a difference in the ability to sell a product to people accustomed to reading it for free.
The real answer for the news business, I think (and this is just a guess), will be to come up with a paid product that’s significantly more timely and relevant to individual readers than what the Net provides at no charge, combined with an experience that’s better than what they provide today. The iPad helps on the latter front (in part by inspiring publishers to do more of the graphically engaging things they should be doing already), but not on the former.
Meanwhile, pundits are taking turns suggesting what devices the iPad will dispatch to the dustbin of history. Chris O’Brien at the San Jose Mercury News asked via Twitter, ‘At $499 for the iPad, why would you ever buy a Netbook?’ Tech journalist Janet Rae-Dupree countered on Facebook, ‘iTouch is the only thing this new device is going to kill.’ Lalee Sadighi at Red Herring explored the iPad’s impact on Amazon’s Kindle. And so on and so on.
We won’t know for a while, of course, but I think the biggest impact the iPad will have will be on the TV. We’re still in the early stages of our migrating from a world of passive broadcast to interactive on-demand media and information. That transition affects what we consume and how we consume it. Many of the devices we’re using were simply carried over from the old era, like the TV (and to a lesser extent, the PC). The iPad was built for the new era.
And it’s not just a device, it’s a platform that can enable new approaches to media. Just as the iPhone gave rise to applications that enhanced computing with the unique capabilities of a mobile device, so may the iPad lead developers to find new hybrids of interactivity and narrative, linear entertainment. It extends connectivity to more of the things that people do today with media, from newspapers and books to TV shows and movies.
Enterpreneurs and manufacturers are still trying to figure out what tools people will use to tap the potential benefits of being continuously connected to the Web. So, too, are movie studios, record companies and other content providers still trying to adapt their business models to a world where almost everything can be made available to consumers at the time and in the format they demand. I suspect there’s a device category waiting to be discovered, one that’s well suited to the capabilities of this new world. That, I think, is the right context for guessing the fortunes of Apple’s new creation.
-- Jon Healey
