Tracking the shifts in the communications landscape

While there have been many comments on HP’s acquistion of Palm, I would be remiss in skipping the opportunity to discuss how this changes the smartphone market and the computing market. For Palm, it was the necessary life line it needed. Carrier confidence in Palm was slipping and orders had slowed. After 14 quarters of losses, the HP acquistion will quell the fears of Palm’s rapid demise. The acquisition gives Palm global distribution, supply chain efficiencies and the necessary infusion of capital to get to the next level. The most important take away of the acquisition is that webOS will be a critical point of investment.  The real battle in today’s smartphone market is not in the devices themselves but in what operating systems run on these devices.  While we have seen tremendous hardware innovation and the rise of hardware vendors such as HTC and Samsung, the action is moving to the operating system and the applications which run on it. There are at least nine different operating systems currently vying for developers attention in the mobile world including Google’s Android, Samsung’s Bada, RIM’s Blackberry, Apple’s iPhone OS, Linux, Limo, Symbian, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Palm’s webOS. Today success is being measured in the number of apps per platform and the number of smartphones shipped. This is only half the battle. The battle going forward will be about the quality of apps per platform and the number of total devices and platforms the OS resides on. The number of platforms will (i.e. smartphone devices from numerous vendors, tablets, and other devices) will determine scale. This scale combined with the right apps will equate to platform success.

We are about to witness the rebirth of the computing industry as it moves deeper into the mobile realm. The existing operating systems and internet structures were designed for a larger devices with better processors and most likely consistent connectivity. As mobile devices become more like computers, these devices need a richer operating system that can manage the constraints of battery life, intermittent connectivity and smaller form factors. For example, features like multi-touch are more important on devices with a small or no keyboard. And multi-tasking is necessary when your device needs to acting as both your phone and your computer at the same time. We are also seeing proposed to the Web environment with Google’s Chrome and with HTML5.

Apple’s iPhone OS and Google’s Android OS are already moving beyond smartphones. Both companies are trying to replace Microsoft as the next generation OS for smartphones, tablets and other yet to be announced devices. HP could follow suit by adding webOS to its tablets and other network devices such as cameras and printers. Palm was already promoting the notion of a seamless data transfer from the  cloud to the device. HP was also promoting cloud services such as photo printing, Magcloud and cloud based infrastructure. By combining the two companies visions of cloud computing with Palm’s UI and mobile expertise, HP can also make a play for the next generation OS and its developers.

This leaves several questions in the industry. The first is obviously whether HP can resurrect Palm. It won’t be easy nor will it be cheap to convince developers and carriers to back the platform. HP also has to turn around a money losing machine but it has a proven track record that it can streamline costs. Finally, it has to set up a structure that allows Palm to match the pace of Internet development which is now every six to twelve months…not every 18-24 months.

The second question is what happens to RIM. Currently RIM is a vertically integrated device to OS company. There is no indication that RIM will port its OS to laptops, tablets etc. If the above reality plays out, RIM may get shut out of new growth opportunities.

The third question (I’ll stop here as there are many) is will Windows Mobile be able to make a comeback? First, we need to see the devices ship. The OS brings Microsoft up to status quo for today but we haven’t yet seen the next pastry named OS from Google. My guess is we’ll see more innovation before the year ends. I look forward to the changes these new mobile operating systems will bring to computing.

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with Phil McKinney, CTO of HP’s Personal Systems Group, at HP Labs in Cupertino. Given the latest flurry of activity around the Slate, I wanted to discuss the future of netbooks versus tablets and how he saw the evolution of the space. (Sadly, he didn’t have an HP Slate with him at the time of our interview.) Phil, an animated technologist, immediately found a white board to discuss the various markets. He described the various types of devices on an X-Y axis where you trade-off reach and mobility with the richness of experience. For example, a desktop isn’t very portable but it offers a very feature rich experience. Meanwhile, a smartphone is highly portable but offers limited functionality and poor battery life.

McKinney stated that one key difference between the product categories is whether the device is intended to create content versus consume content. He noted that content is not just text but a full rich media experience. He said HP is seeing this shift to rich media in magazines as well as the addition of photography and video for storytelling. Meanwhile content creation devices support a balance of productivity features such as typing and presentation creation.  McKinney believes the HP Slate form factor will win content consumption market because it is highly portable and optimized for the content delivery and enjoyment versus content creation. McKinney noted that this style of device was created to read, not write, “War and Peace”. He sees the tablet products filling today’s gap between smartphones and netbooks — a tweener category.

McKinney made me laugh when he said in the past the industry would say, “ We have a notebook.  Now what is the question? “ It reminded me of the old Henry Ford quote “People can have the Model T in any color – so long as it’s black” He went on to discuss that each of these product categories (netbooks, tablets, smartphones, e-readers) as well as new categories will exist to support different consumers needs. Mr. McKinney said consumers won’t buy a product in each of these categories but will instead pick the combination that is right for their needs. Consumers will most likely have two to three devices. For example, a consumer may buy a tablet for portability and a small feature phone just for voice. Others might choose an e-reader, a smartphone and a laptop.

What I gather from this discussion is that we have finally hit right balance of processing power, small form factor components and low cost manufacturing to a make developing a set of niche or market specific consumer devices economical. In short, we finally have the technology underpinnings to create the type of product choice in electronics that we have in other areas such as consumer-packaged goods. The move to pervasive 3G/4G coverage coupled with new sensors that HP and others are developing will provide a new wave of connected devices. The machine to machine (M2M) market of the 1990′s and early 2000′s will explode to include a whole new set of consumer devices such as connected blood glucose monitors, internet-enabled cameras, smart utility meters as well as networked cars and homes.  I look forward to experiencing the “consumer choice” HP and others will enable in the upcoming years.

Over the past two months, Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have all announced new tablet products. While tablets have existed for some time, the category accounts for less than 2% of today’s PC market and appeals to niche business verticals like healthcare and insurance. But the entrance of Apple into the space has ushered in a new sense of enthusiasm and confusion.  Apple claims to be entering the space because Netbooks have not fulfilled their promise. In essence Mr. Jobs believes Apple’s new tablet can deliver on the promise of low-cost, easy to use multimedia device with only the essential computing needs. Apple’s focused on making the tablet and excellent media device first. On the flip side, Steve Ballmer used HP’s Slate in a demo at CES to highlight a full-featured tablet that offers media with a computing environment.

This leaves us with a few burning questions. First, What is the difference between a netbook and a Tablet? Second, will tablets replace netbooks? And third, will HP be successful against Apple in the tablet space?

In my opinion, netbooks and the tablets are different and will continue to be separate market categories in the short run because the netbook offers ample hard drive storage, runs a wide range of applications and offers a full keyboard. This next generation of tablets is meant to capture a new market – those that don’t want a PC but enjoy media. I liken this to what Nintendo has done with the Wii. It expanded the gaming market by building a product that appealed to non-gamers.

On the note of can HP beat Apple? I don’t believe it is an either or scenario. While many think the device will be a flop, I believe Apple will be successful because it will expand the market. It appears that HP’s Slate will arrive with more functionality than the Apple iPad (see comparison chart). But unless HP is careful, this could be a double-edged sword. Consumers looking for a stripped down laptop are more likely to select a netbook than a tablet. Consumers looking for a multimedia device are more likely to select a Tablet device. By running Windows 7 and touting its feature richness, HP will appeal more to the netbook market. This means HP must position the product based on its multimedia capabilities and not the bells and whistles that appeal to the PC market.

While the tablet market is still in its infancy, HP must do something truly different to rise above the coming tidal wave of devices from the likes of Acer, Dell, JooJoo and Sony. Both Apple and Google are feverishly working to replace Microsoft’s ubiquitous presence in computing. Both companies believe that dominating the operating systems of the next wave of connected devices provides an opportunity to disintermediate Microsoft.

Dell has already announced a relationship with Google to build a 5-inch tablet that runs the Android operating system. But the existing apps will not scale effectively to larger screen. HP could work closely with Google and its apps community to create a tablet version of the Android OS and its apps. This would provide HP with access to over 20,000 Android apps as well as other sticky services like Picasa. HP should also consider adding a Chrome variant.

A second avenue for HP to compete against Apple and the others would be in the education market. HP has strong presence in the networking market for education. In addition to wirelessly-enabling schools, HP could also work with learning platforms such as Blackboard, textbook publishers and schools to create compelling pre-configured educational tablets.

It is always difficult to compete with the marketing muscle of Apple, its tablet is currently missing some key features such as a camera, multitasking and flash support. While Apple has the opportunity to capture double-digit share in the market, I believe there is enough market opportunity for others to be successful in the tablet space. The challenge is appealing to what those users want.

Figure 1. Comparison of  the known features of Apple’s iPad and HP’s Slate

Last Thursday, Cisco held the first of its quarterly collaboration business reviews.  Barry O’Sullivan, SVP VTG and Carl Wiese, SVP Global Collaboration Sales, presented a brief overview of the unified communications and collaboration business to roughly 20 analysts via telepresence and Webex. (Aside: I must say, I truly enjoy the telepresence experience. I find it a very natural way to attend a meeting now.) The highlights are as follows:

• 17% year over year growth in UC + collaboration. (Sadly, Cisco doesn’t report this by product.)
• IP telephony has seen continued momentum with growth across all regions. Cisco has now shipped  28M IP phones. It claims there is no slowdown in the momentum of the IP business.
• Contact center sold 1.9 million seats
• Double digit growth in telepresence.
• 450 enterprise IM customers
• 3,600 telepresence locations

The company also discussed 4 clients: BT for its managed UC offering, Molina Healthcare, Duke University and an athletic company that is most likely Nike.  The company has a strong focus on the channel and believes there is much to be won from this focus. For example, Cisco sees opportunity for wallet share shifts within partners that were selling Cisco as well as competing products. I agree with this. It is still open season on Nortel channel partners who have been shifting for some time.  I believe Cisco will also need to add a different type of channel partner to support workflow-oriented products such as collaboration and enterprise social software. The company claims to be addressing this as we speak.

My takeaway from the meeting is that while others struggled to maintain share, Cisco continues to  grow. This doesn’t mean that Cisco is without challenges. For example, it is still not viewed as a software vendor, but it has plunged into the competitive software world of Microsoft and IBM. But Cisco has a large war chest to throw at the problem. Many firms are also in the process of  requesting proposals for UC and it is proving that it can shift clients from its competitors. It will be interesting to see if Cisco can redefine collaboration to match the description of its new product offerings versus those of IBM and Microsoft. What do you think?

As promised in an earlier blog, I am sharing with you  several comments from a discussion I had with three industry experts in a panel discussion titled ” Navigating the New Mobile Application Development and Distribution Models.”   One of the topics we addressed was the “open versus closed” models.  For example, companies like Apple are viewed as a closed platform. But also a platform  that works well.  On the other hand, there is a discussion of open devices that could run on any service provider network. I asked the panelist, how they defined open and how open do we as an industry need to be? Mike Kirkup, Director, Developer Relations, Research In Motion, presented a broad definition of what open meant. He said ” The term open has many different definitions and the definition largely depends on who you are speaking with. Open could mean any one of the following: 1) an open platform; 2) open control, 3) open distribution 4) open in terms of what applications can run on it, 5) open distribution channels, or 6) open source code. It is difficult to debate openness because people are usually discussing different things.

Anand Iyer, Senior Product Manager in Microsoft’s Windows Phone Developer Team, focused his comments on the closed platform versus the closed eco-system.  He said “Our philosophy is that consumers want to be able to pick certain carriers for certain regions and certain devices in order to  be happy. We believe in that notion and we will continue to move down that path (of openness)as we build future versions of our software. We will be transparent in terms of policy and clear on which policies we want publishers to enforce in order to be good ecosystem citizens.”

I also asked Anthony Deighton, Senior Vice President at Qlikview, how the notion of openness impacts his business.He provided the application vendors’ perspective when he said “ We want to provide a positive experience to the end user, but the closed eco-systems are a concern. The issue resides in the capricious and unilateral nature of their process, but we still must deal with this process. I am pleased that other eco-systems are becoming more open and are pushing the closed eco-systems to open up. It is competition at work.”

My take:

At the end of the discussion, I decided the term “open” is and will continue to be ill-defined. What the industry is struggling with is how to balance/enable choice while delivering high usability at a low cost. I believe mostly closed platforms like Apple’s will live on to ensure end-to-end control of the user experience. But I also believe improvements in the mobile web like HTTP5 as well as Google’s drive to disrupt the ecosystem will enable more choices for developers. In short, we’ll live in a hybrid world.

Lately, numerous clients have asked me how enterprise social software should be integrated into their unified communications and collaboration deployment strategies. This is a good question. I will be addressing this question in an upcoming report called “The move to Pervasive Communications: the Convergence of UC, collaboration and enterprise social software”, which will be out in April.

However, these discussions raised a question in my mind.  Enterprise social software, while a nascent market, is not going away. With the exception of IBM and Microsoft, the enterprise social software landscape is a vast array of small software vendors that are selling point solutions.  IBM and Microsoft provide one set of options that is based around messaging and document management but where are the other big vendors? Oracle has a presence in the space but is not thought of as an ESS vendor. And other software companies like Salesforce.com are just jumping into the fray by adding new features like Chatter. Avaya, Siemens and other communications providers have strong UC offerings, but appear to be lacking an ESS strategy.  And Cisco just started its push beyond UC and collaboration with its first iteration of ESS called ECP.  In short, no one has pulled together the whole solution yet.

Make no mistake; enterprise social software will become an integral part of the collaboration landscape – not the bolt on that it is today. You can already see this trend in the latest versions of software from IBM and Microsoft. Businesses have told me that they want to work with a limited set of strategic vendors to supply the entirety of their communications needs including ESS. Instead of cobbling together multiple point products from numerous companies, businesses want strategic vendors like Cisco, Oracle and Salesforce to provide aspects, or the entirety,  of ESS as part of their core offering.  Will Google be a serious contender for the enterprise? (Personally, I’m not sure that is in the cards for an enterprise customer but perhaps for SMB.) I welcome your comments on who should provide ESS; what aspects they should provide and what is the best way to add these features (acquisition, organic development etc.).

Two weeks ago, I wrapped up the third in a series of webinars on mobility and the future of software with the Software & Information Industry  Association. With over 7 different mobile operating system and an everchanging device landscape, software developers face numerous challenges in designing for the mobile world. Should you build natively for a particular OS, should you design for the web or both? How many operating systems make sense? What is the role of the carrier in this new environment? This session will discuss what companies should consider when designing for a fragmented landscape. The last event took on these questions in a panel titled: Navigating the New Mobile Application Development and Distribution Models. The panelists were:

Anthony Deighton, Senior Vice President, Products, QlikView

Mike Kirkup, Director, Developer Relations, Research In Motion

Anand Iyer, Senior Product Manager, Windows Phone Developer Team, Microsoft

Note: I tried to shorten but maintain the character of the response to facilitate easy reading.

Maribel: what are the advantages for designing an application for a platform versus designing for the mobile web?  The follow on question to that would be, when do we think that the mobile web would be as a main design platform, coming into its own? So let’s start with Anand or (AI).

Anand: It is a definitely  an interesting point.  And what I think about the mobile web, and what the capabilities of existing browsers have offered as well as existing mark up, and the technology in terms of plenty of browsers being offered today, be it Flash or MS Silverlight or welcoming HTML5 we should see a lot of promise.  One of the first things browsers should push the limits on is in the richness of  the user interface, which is in some ways lacking. If  you look at the richness in UI’s, applications obviously have a leg up in that arena and it is yet to be seen how these different technologies such as flash or HTML5 can push those limits with web browsers on mobile devices.  The second area that comes to mind in terms of needed capabilities is  how do mobile applications manage a accelorometers, proximity sensors or GPS? I think that we are at that point where we need to find out again how mobile, purely web apps can take advantage of these capabilities on a device.  And the third that comes to mind is discoverability.  I think again, giving kudos to what Apple and what the app world has done, discoverability is a pretty key especially for consumers, as well as for publishers.  And if there is a (better) way to accomplish that through the mobile web or web browsers in some way, I think that we will start to see a proliferation of applications through web apps instead.   We will probably see more applications in the browser, but for now, the need for (OS specific) applications are definitely leading the way.

Maribel: Got it.  Mike do you have anything to add to that?

Mike: Yes, I believe people look at the mobile web today, as an opportunity to write one application across many platforms.  People are looking for (the mobile web) to be the next holy grail so to speak, in terms of mobile applications.  The unfortunate reality is that  we are quite a long way from the point in time where that’s  going to happen in a meaningful way. Even though mark up languages like HTML and others — especially HMTL5  – is at least more standardized – but points vary across platforms such as how does java script work and what are the functions that are available on the platforms.  I think there will still be challenges associated with making one application cross many platforms, but one of the biggest disadvantages to using web technology is, not necessary web applications themselves,  but what technology (to use) such as HTML, JavaScript and CS. You can build on an existing developer markets and  technologies that a lot of developers world wide know already today. There is a huge amount of focus on a random list of tools. So we are spending the time to  integrate into existing tools like Microsoft Digital Studio,Eclipse, or the Adobe tool sets — whether that’s Creator Suite (Roxio) or Dreamweaver (Macromedia)– or others.  We want to  give people the opportunity to use the tools that they already have and to extend those processes and practices to mobile.

Maribel: Great.  Anthony, as someone who is in the industry working through the applications landscape, how do you think this will impact your business?

Anthony: Yes, what I can bring to this discussion is the real world pain of this as a prospective customer of these technologies. I would agree whole-heartedly with the previous speakers in the sense that we have heard that the current web technologies aren’t evolved to a point where we can reliably build once and deploy across many devices. As nice as that idea would be, we aren’t there yet. So consequently, we are building native applications on a variety of  mobile platforms.  There is a tremendous cost associated with that and therefore it is a real challenge.  We have great hopes for HTML5 and others.  But, I would also add, that even if it were true that these technologies (HTML5, etc.) could exceed our expectations,  it is likely that we would build native applications anyway because of the level of interactivity we need is unlikely to be met by mobile browsers and or by those technologies.   In particular for us, we are looking at business intelligence on a mobile device and our chief differentiator is that interactivity in an offline capability being able to click and see the interaction as you do it, driving to select, and all of these sorts of view eye metaphors are really kind of important to us, and least. As far what we have seen today, the native tools provide better support for those aspects. It is possible things will be different in two years. Maybe they will be different in one year, but for today, that is what we are doing.

My take:

Basically, I think it will be several years before the mobile web comes even close to offering what applications providers would want to deliver the type of functionality above. And that is being generous. I believe we will be building natively on various O.S. platforms for some time. I also believe that some developers will also always chose to develop for a specific device in order to attain a level of differentiation. The big difference, in my mind, is how much development will be required per platform. Disclosure, I am not a developer so so I can’t claim to know how easy or difficult this is.  It strikes me that with HTTP-5 Apple and Android will move closer to mobile web with fewer specific bells and whistles required to make those platforms sing. I also believe Palm’s Web OS is an attempt to blend those worlds today. My question to the audience: where is differentiation built in the smartphone business going forward? Love to start a dialogue.

Next up the panel and Lopez Research discuss  ”How open do we really need to be?”

This interview was conducted live at CES in the Sprint Lounge on January 7, 2010. I had intended to create a 3 minute podcast but due to sound quality issues , I am converting it into a blog post. I’d welcome your comments on connected devices, M2M and the move to 4G.

Maribel: Mathew,  There has been a lot discussion about the moving of the 4G environment and some of the challenges that operators are facing. One of them perhaps being back-haul and another being supporting users in denser environments.  What do you see as the main technical challenges in moving to 4G?

Mathew: I concur with you in that there are many challenges.  One of them indeed, like you said, is back-haul, the other is spectrum to provide the customer with the right experience.  And the third one would be session continuity between your 3G and 4G environments. And the fourth one would be device availability.  I think that all of these are challenges that need to be addressed to make sure that you can provide the customers with the right experience at an affordable cost structure.

Maribel: Mathew, that is a broad list of challenges.  Can you spend a few minutes discussing how we fix some of those. For example, session continuity, what are the things we need to address there?

Mathew: When I look at all of the four challenges – I believe all of them are important. Indeed session continuity is one of the most critical ones, because when a user goes on a 4G network, a 4G network is initially not everywhere. So you will have to get down to a 3G level in between as you move from region to region.  We have engineered our network between Clear-wire and Sprint, in such a way that we leverage our 3G infrastructure with their 4G infrastructure, because the beauty of the 4G infrastructure that we have is, it’s an all IP infrastructure.  This is the first time an all IP national infrastructure has ever been built.  And this is an end-to-end IP infrastructure including the RAN.  The other component that I would  like to add here is the back haul.  One of our biggest challenges is back haul. AT&T and Verizon and the other incumbents control 90% or more of the access market in the US. And we obviously don’t want to be in the  position where the cost of back haul is hurting our business.  We would like to have a level playing field, and we would like to work with the regulators, so that we can meet some of the expectations of uniform mobile broadband connectivity in the US. However, for now we have addressed the back haul differently, since we are leveraging microwave.

Maribel: Interesting.  There have been many discussions of open access for both for Internet access in general as well as in the mobile space. There clearly are challenges that we will face going forward in that.

Mathew: Absolutely, I totally agree with you on that.

Maribel: Mathew, there is a great deal of excitement about machine to machine (M2M), and the movement to internet of things.  One of the questions that is frequently asked is, what is the benefit to having 4G as we move to the internet of things, what’s Sprint’s perspective on that?

Mathew: Sincerely, we at Sprint believe, that machine to machine is going to be the biggest transformation that is going to happen in this decade.  We obviously are expecting hundreds of millions, in fact billions of connected devices for the next ten to fifteen years globally in the M2M space. 4G is very unique in enabling certain components of machine to machine, because anytime you get a device connected to the internet, the internet has always fostered innovation and we believe connectivity to the internet will spawn more innovation in the machine to machine space.  For example, look at the considerable amount of time, effort and money that is being spent on the energy smart grid.

Maribel: Right.

Mathew: We believe that we will require multiple smart grids as our nation transitions into the new digital economy.  As an example, a health smart grid, a transportation smart grid, and a national defense smart grid.  It is not just one energy smart grid.  Today, all of our emphasis has been on energy smart grid.  As machines become more connected, machines become more pervasive.  The smart grids will become a hierarchical smart grid that will include –and actually become –the national smart grid backbone.  Now look at the baby boomers who are becoming older. The families of the baby boomers want to take care of them using remote health monitoring. And transportation is not just about security, ticketing or logistics, but,  it is also about enriched multimedia services across the mass transit system.  So, machine to machine, is the fundamental building block and 4G is the enabler to making the smart grids happen as we transition into a digital economy.

Maribel: Wonderful, so we should expect more smart grids and also video. Lopez Research believes there is a great market opportunity in the numerous connected devices we will see here at CES and in the future to come.  I want to thank you for your time today.  It has been wonderful speaking to you, and I look forward to speaking to you again, and hearing your progress on the move to 4G.

Question to the readers: What do you think the connected device market opportunity is? Who wins? Who loses?

I’d like to start this post by saying, first, I have nothing against men. In fact, I love men. However, I was excited to attend an all female conference for women in technology. The  Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference was held this past Tuesday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. The program spanned a wide range of topics including venture funding, negotiation strategies, branding, lessons learned and even social causes.

Key takeaways from the event:

I was surprised by the diverse range of careers that are now considered part of women in tech. For example, I met programmers, women in film as well as social cause fundraisers.

Katherine Parr, partner at MDV, has the ability to teach a room of people the basics of negotiation with a practice negotiation session  in less than an hour. Thanks Katherine. It was great!

Heather Harde, CEO of Techcrunch, shared 11 lessons she learned throughout her career. They are as follows:

1. Think big! She gave an example of discussing two great product options with Rupert Murdoch and why she had selected one over another.  Apparently he said “ Well What if we do both a and b? She said “What does it take to be big? Why not? Creative brainstorming. If money weren’t an object how would you go about solving the problem. Give yourself the freedom not to be constrained.”
2. Be resilient – Due to a merger, she fired her second day at the job. She ended up staying at 10 years by being tenacious.
3. Personalize the business.
4. Have 3 points. Two is too few and four is too many.
5. Triangulate your answers
6. Always have options
7. What is your pinky number? Are you willing to bet your pinky on it? This means you have an aggressive number but you have reasons to believe you can do it.
8. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Is all the work you are putting into something going to be worth it.
9. Listening – Working in Japan with limited language skills taught her to understand body language and subtle cues
10. Authenticity matters – personalize what you are writing as well.
11. You can do it.  The Harde family mantra.

There were many other great lessons in the day, but I’ll keep this post short. I enjoyed this conference but would like a more “unconference” approach for the next one. Feel free to ping me if you’d like to here more about what I learned. Also, if you are a woman in tech, I’d love to meet you virtually or in person.

Many reporters, analysts and industry luminaries have already commented on the upcoming tablet. The iPad has finally arrived and I have decided to add my comments to the millions that already exist. I must say, I liked the name iSlate better, but what do I know about branding for a $50B business. First, there were many impressive statistics:
• Apple sold over 250 M iPods.
• Apple now has 284 stores and last quarter stores had 50m visitors.
• The app store has over 140k apps and over 3b apps have been downloaded.
• Apple has 125 million accounts with credit cards online
• Jobs states 75m people already know how to use the iPad because of how many iPhones and iPod touches Apple’s shipped

I won’t bore you with the stats. You can view them online here. http://www.apple.com/ipad/design/ Suffice it to say that the only thing that was missing was a camera. Reporters mentioned the lack of voice support. If it can run all the iphone apps, it should be able to run Skype. Voice …done. Not that I think this is a killer app but I was hoping for Skype video on the tablet. After the millions of articles, there were still surprises, such as:
• Apple decided to go with its own chip. The iPad sport the new Apple A4 chip. Apparently, Apple didn’t think Intel had the goods in terms of speed and battery life. If you want 10 hours of battery life, you weren’t going to use the existing technology.
• Prepaid monthly contract, cheap plans…and AT&T. Despite dashing our hopes of multi-carrier coverage, Apple signed an aggressive deal with AT&T. Given the amount of data this device could push, it is no surprise that a “comes with data plan” was not an option. However, the ability to buy with or without 3G and to get a prepaid plan is a win for consumers. Many complained about the Kindles lack of Wi-Fi because consumers don’t necessarily want to pay yet another bill. For others, prepaid with a cancel at any time policy provides the flexibility to turn it on when needed (i.e. such as for the month of March when I am constantly traveling)
• iWork for iPad. I consider iWork more of a laptop application but I can see the relevance if you want to bring one device. Also, the data entry keyboard in Numbers (the spreadsheet ap) is a great usability feature.

Not so surprising, but relevant:
• iBook store. During the CES demo of the pre-release version of the Skiff reader, its CEO said there are 65 million people who are classified as readers in the US. (A reader is a person that buys 6 books a year.) It appears that Apple has decided that the ebook market is worth getting a piece of after all but only as part of a broader media solution.  What was pleasantly surprising was the choice of EPub, a standard open book format. Hey, maybe I will finally be able to download books from the library….coolness.
• Still missing flash. It looks like Apple and Google are aligned. Both companies want to advance to HTML5 and skip flash altogether.
• Iphone apps work seamlessly on the iPad. What’s the big deal? Well, it means that with a small change in SDKs, all iPhone developers are also iPad developers. This makes the iPhone O.S. a more strategic development platform, because developers have the opportunity to develop for devices of multiple screen sizes. Will Google’s Android follow? If so, it could be interesting. Perhaps Chrome will not be the Netbook OS of the future. And it looks like Netbooks as we know them will be changed forever.

Who wins? Who loses?

Winners
• Media companies. Print publications now have a platform that can encourage consumers to subscribe to new digital models. The iPad helps print media bridge the gap between static and interactive content. It also preserves the brand attributes of print media such as newspaper sections and typography. And like Amazon, Apple provides media companies with a frictionless commerce engine that will reach at least 125 million consumers. I’m not saying the business model will be without challenge but it is nice to see innovation in this space.

• Education. CEO Terry McGraw stated that McGraw Hill has 95 percent of its materials in e-book format. Unfortunately, Amazon’s Kindle DX made few inroads into the $5B plus textbook market. It looks like the iPad is poised to take advantage of this market.

• App developers. The new mobile app development market has allowed numerous small shops to quickly come to market. This new army of developers now gets a now have the opportunity to build for the iPhone and the iPad. It also extends the market opportunity beyond today’s standard $1.99 app price points.

Who loses?
• Carriers. Yes, we could say carriers will benefit from getting more customers to subscribe to data services and that is true. However, the reality of what they get are more bits following over already clogged wireless pipes. AT&T’s network was already swamped. I can’t imagine how poor my connectivity will be once the iPad is out. Also, I’m not clear everyone will opt for 3G.  It makes great sense in a phone where you need the data for maps etc. but it is not a necessity for a tablet.

• Netbook markets. Netbooks started out with the goal of creating the category between a smartphone and a laptop. But Steve Jobs nailed it when he said “Netbooks aren’t better at anything”. While this market is meant to be a stripped down laptop, the definition of a connected device continues to evolve and Apple just moved the needle.

• eReaders and E Ink. I must’ve seen hundreds of e-Readers at CES in January. They all look like outdated paperweights as of today. Truthfully, they looked lame compared to the Kindle as well. While I still like the “book-like” feel of E Ink, I believe it will be hard for E Ink products to compete with richness of the backlight LCD. The iPad has also raise the bar for Amazon and should bury the Nook.

In summary, Apple now owns three digital storefronts:  books, apps and media. Apple is well positioned to take advantage of a new era of digital content.  Apple has yet to replace the set-top box but stay tuned.