Whenever you read about Apple Tablet rumors, it's easy to write them off as empty talk. But is the Apple Tablet the real deal anyway?
Prior to the release of the Apple Macbook Air in January 2008, there was consistently word on the street that Apple was about to make a new move in the ultraportable market. Back then, we were among the ones that believed Steve Jobs would actually get on stage with an ultra-thin laptop. Others said Apple would never compromise on functionality just to offer an ultra-thin laptop. These people got one thing right though: It didn't become a mainstream hit. But that we already knew, because mainstream laptops have their own category that Apple already covered well.
When judging whether the Apple Tablet is the real deal, we think it's important to look at what segments of the media market Apple doesn't already cover. We've seen rumors suggesting that the Apple Tablet is a super-sized iPhone, but that might just be what it looks like. Consistent rumors say that the Apple Tablet will have a 10.1-inch screen, which leads us to believe that what Apple is aiming for here is to capitalize on the netbook craze. Everybody knows what needs to be done in this market segment, but nobody has yet to release something that just nails it.
When Apple entered the smartphone market, they skipped the QWERTY keyboard and eventually succeeded with that. If Apple enters the netbook market, we think they'll skip the keyboard and eventually succeed with that. But, the iPhone evolution has revealed an important lesson though: If you don't start out with the right tools, there's no marketing hype that can help you out, only hard work. And we all know there's stuff Apple would have loved to be able to do with the current iPhone 3GS that it can't pull off without sacrificing performance.
And that leads us back to the Macbook Air, and its compromise with general user expectation to cover a certain market segment. Will Apple acknowledge that there's a niche market for the Apple Tablet, which could potentially grow to a large niche market in a few years, or will the Macbook Air be the last product of the adventurous kind for Apple? If you ask us, 2010 and beyond will not be the time to play it safe, so we place our bets on Apple releasing the Apple Tablet as soon as they've found partners that can put together a product that lives up to at least 40-50% of the potential marketing claims. That's all it took for the iPhone to get a good start back in 2007.
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