Well, part of me is relieved that I won’t have to brave the fanboy line anytime soon. That said, the consumer in me might be on board one or two iterations down the line. Apple did a pretty good job against my end-user wish list, but I’m not seeing anything earth-shattering from a media perspective.
Book publishers seem to have a fair amount to be happy about – namely better revenue than they currently enjoy from Amazon, at least.
And The New York Times seems to be totally on board (despite the whole no-flash-video thing!). From what I can tell, they’ve struck a good balance between digital and physical consumption of the newspaper, but I don’t see the iPad saving newspapers anytime soon – failing due to both audience mass and a lack of imagination with regard to ad units. I think this stems from the fact that everyone has concentrated only on the audience side of the revenue equation. While I agree that the audience experience comes first, it seems to me that for a publication, which for the first time has seen more revenue come from sales than advertising (and, trust me, that’s not a result of circulation growth or subscription price!), there would be much more emphasis on demonstrating the value that the iPad edition has for advertisers. I was surprised that there didn’t seem to be a magazine demo yesterday at all.
Today, I just don’t view it as a legitimate fourth screen – insofar as it only provides another route into two existing media (Internet, and to a much lesser degree, TV). It might put another nail into the WAP coffin, but it doesn’t displace SMS and is not a legitimate contender for what print dollars still remain out there. At this point, all it promises to do is reproduce print ads in all of their 2-D glory in about a third of the space – there’s no way I’m going to pay extra for that or the limited incremental circulation this will represent over the next two years. Where’s the interactivity? Where are the parameters for rich executions? Where’s my measurement data?
There’s potential (beyond super-absorbency – sorry, had to do it) in the iPad to be sure, but it’s not there yet, and I can only hope that it will be a catalyst for things to come.
I agree it was odd there was not a full demo from a magazine publication (other than the early on-screen visit by Jobs to Time.com in which he subsequently clicked on a story and got a missing flash plugin error).
The big fail for the iPad is its lack of a camera (front or back-facing) and flash enabled- not to mention no HDMI output/USB port. Hell, most netbooks and smartphones have a camera or two.
The value of the iPad for advertisers lie in the platform itself – albeit limited. What boundaries can be pushed with new SDK for developers to build apps specifically for the iPad? (Still, this is limited by Apples closed-app ecosystem. What if the iPad had the technology to read augmented reality codes – as of now you need a webcam. That is the next step. Click “here” to decode codes of interactivity. This is the light, on the go, device with proper display for AR.
Amazon reminded people today that they still have a stranglehold on the e-Reader market.
http://mashable.com/2010/01/28/amazon-kindle-ipad/
I’m interested to see what will come of the HP Slate running Windows 7 – and what T3 will be doing with Windows Mobile as a new client. With a imminent new OS, how will they navigate this type of 4th screen device and differentiate itself from the Apple & Android OS?
@HeathTavrides
Yeah – I was really counting on a camera to enable AR (assuming you saw my post from the day prior). At this point, I don’t view it as an ad platform play, first because advertiser apps already exist for the iPhone/Touch and will work on the iPad, but mainly because I don’t think the iPad base will grow at the same rate that we saw from the iPhone, so it’s going to lack audience mass for a while.
I should also be clear about the fact that I don’t think it’s Apple’s responsibility to create a media channel for us ad-types to exploit – that responsibility rests with publishers and broadcasters – to me, they’re the ones that will decide whether we all need fourth screens or not. My surprise and disappointment stems partly from the fact that aside from the NYT, both sides (Apple and media vendors) have hardly acknowledged one-another. Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me so much with regard to broadcasters, but it does make me think that the print entities either have their heads in the sand or have their own irons in the fire somewhere…