The iPad: What Will It Mean to Us?
A couple exciting things happened yesterday. Nearly all my attention was focused on the launch of the new First Vehicle Services website. Meanwhile the rest of the world was focused on this. Steve Jobs said that it is “our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” Adam at Gizmod said it sucks. My wife said “maybe we could get an iPad instead of the netbooks we have been looking at,” (no link, she said it in real life.) Well, I still haven’t gotten a chance to read or watch anything about the device, so I will leave the opinion to others. However, I do know a couple things.
- The ubiquity of hand-held mobile devices has changed how we develop interactive strategy, products and services.
- Apple will sell a lot of these things, thanks to marketing prowess and rabid customer base.
Ergo, I think that the iPad will become a real platform for outreach and development. People have downloaded over one billion iPhone/iPod apps; if sold apps equaled even one tenth of 1 percent, that would be one million. And not all apps are time sucks; some of them connect you with actual content. Either way, that is a lot of impressions. I am watching the keynote in the background while I write this and have skipped to the app section. All iPhone apps will work natively and will even scale gracefully via pixel-doubling. Additionally, the SDK has been released for developing iPad that leverage the uniqueness of the device.
Can we use the iPad as either a revenue stream (sold apps) or delivery tool for focused content that serves a specific purpose? Hopefully other members of the team will continue the discussion.
UPDATE: Apparently the print industry believes the iPad “will breathe new life into their struggling industry“, which is not what I meant. I think said industry believes every new technology is magically going to solve their bloated, archaic business practices. This is misguided. Fix what is wrong, don’t just hold out for the next big thing that will allow you to keep making the same mistakes that have left your industry in serious trouble for the last decade. If Manning tried to sell every client on what we did 15 years ago, we would be dead. Our ability to thrive through the changing market requires acute awareness of the present and future landscape, and then use that understanding to help our clients achieve their business goals. We may pitch award-winning video services, but only if it is right for the goals, messages and audience. We sure as hell are not going to pitch it for the sake of sales alone.
