Almost ten years ago I had a tablet. Yes, almost ten years ago. It was an HP with Microsoft Tablet PC operating system. A cool one. I remember that at that time we took him to meetings and commercial visits. Clients and collaborators hallucinated. Everyone loved the device’s manageability, its lightness, its line… however, these tablets never reached the mass market. Why?
It wasn’t about the price, which was quite attractive, just a little higher than a laptop. Neither did the technology: the touch screen worked very well and incorporated a fully fold-out physical keyboard. The processor power was sufficient for daily Internet and office tasks. However, the product did not jump the abyss, it did not go beyond a few daring users…
Until Apple and Jobs’ enormous prescriptive power came along to encourage millions of people to buy this gadget. This year takes the tablet in the technology business. It’s the fashion. As a friend of mine says, having an Apple product is like having a BMW, the purchase arguments are not judged in a totally rational way.
Of course the iPad is a great product but, from my point of view, not as disruptive as the iPod or the iPhone. I think the brand sells a lot in this case and if the iPad came with another company, the success in the market would have been much more limited. This does not detract from the value of Apple’s proposal, one of the firms most loved by their clients as BusinessWeek points out in this article and the accompanying graphic below.
