By Jim Lundy
Tablets were not on most peoples’ radar when Apple introduced the iPad in 2010. Apple is very clever in how it prepares to enter established markets. It caught the PC industry completely off guard when it introduced the iPad and it is about to do that to the Television set market. On tablets, most PC Laptop vendors should have seen it coming, since the iPad is nothing more than a large iPhone (sans cell phone capabilities). The question is, will it be a surprising move when Apple enters the Television Set market later in 2012 or just a natural expansion of its current product line.
Tablets vs TVs – the battle for Resolution
If we look at the current iPad (generation 3), many in the press are still trying to figure out Apple’s strategy with it. Why launch a new iPad whose only real new feature was better display resolution? In reality, the new iPad offers better HD resolution than any television set currently on the market (yes, video image quality does matter and users can tell the difference). If you haven’t used an iPad, it is a pretty strong multi-media device, playing movies and tv shows in high definition for up to ten hours without a battery recharge. Many people today stream movies and tv shows from their iPad to their TV via the Apple TV device. Many college students today watch movies in HD on their Macbook Pro. It all seems to point to something more.
Apple Tablets and TVs: Building the Video Content Ecosystem
What Apple has been doing for a few years is building out its content ecosystem for video, enough so that when it launches a device like an Apple TV, the content needed to ensure its success will already be available. Just look at iTunes today and see what users can select from – just on TV Shows. Apple offers thousands of TV Shows and thousands of Movies via the iTunes store. It is a video content ecosystem that has been under construction for a few years and it will be the basis for an expansion of its product lineup (note, read about tablet and mobile ecosystems in our new Strategic Report).
What will an Apple TV device be like? Think overgrown iPad with the Siri digital assistant, which makes a physical remote control optional, not mandatory.
Apple Tablets are here to stay and it looks like Apple TVs soon will be too. Besides this consumer move, Apple is a major player today in the enterprise, mainly due to its understanding and its curation of mobile ecosystems. Checkout our special reports on Apple and on Tablet Computers.