Despite what the title may lead you to believe, I honestly have no idea what this might mean for you. What I think it might mean for content publishers, i.e., newspapers, magazines, and content/media companies in general, is that consumers will finally have a device that will allow us to consume this content in a more natural, comfortable way.
The really interesting prospect is how this can be very disruptive to some of the larger players in this field, while still benefiting consumers and other, more at risk players (before the iPad announcement). The larger players in this movie are Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The more at risk players are the newspaper and magazine industries as a whole.
Look at Amazon – their whole model for the Kindle was essentially blown up today. I like Amazon, I think they’re a very smart, well run company. They’ve done ebusiness better than anyone to this point. I’ve purchased two Kindle’s but, unless they come up with something more amazing than what Apple debuted today, I won’t be renewing any current subscriptions with them and I’m pretty certain I’ll be picking up an iPad at the first opportunity.
Barnes and Noble really missed the boat on this – by a wide margin. What they’ve done is copied Amazon’s model. They didn’t really do anything to improve the device or experience in any game changing way. Apple did and beat them at their own game. And BN couldn’t even execute their strategy very well. The whole debacle reeks of a bad keystone cop movie – without the actual movie, popcorn, or laughs.
What Apple has done just seems so absolutely obvious after seeing it debuted today. But, that’s what Steve Jobs does. The man just can’t seem to play the game by the rules as they’ve alway been. He goes and changes the game to play by his rules and we all seem to benefit. I know I sound like a fanboy and I make no apologies for that. I live for this stuff. I love electronics and gadgets and there is nothing more fun than sexy, fun gadgets that improve how I consume content.
What I’m really interested in seeing is the impact this device will have on the education market. And I’m not just talking about kids walking around using Mac’s because they’re cool. While they are cool, I don’t think we’d continue to see the market share gains the Mac platform is seeing if there wasn’t more to it than that. Make no mistake, there is more to it than that. This topic has been covered by people smarter than me so I’ll simply say that more times than not, the marriage of hardware and software has not only benefited the people that use the devices day after day – it’s also had a direct benefit for Apple as a company – just look at their stock price.
Getting back to the education market – it’s like it was tailor made for education. Think about the ability to download textbooks, google for answers, and improve the experience while doing it.
Ok, maybe I lied in the beginning of this article – I think this is going to change the way you and I consume content. Maybe not in the “game changer” type fasion but, I can see people consuming more content with these types of devices. It doesn’t hurt that it’s sexy too!
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You make a lot of good points. I disagree with your assessment that this won’t be a game changer. I think it already is.