The iPad, Your Newest Workplace Productivity Enhancer
The iPad is fun and games. And spreadsheets and presentation graphics and collaboration tools and …
Photo illustration by Arthur Hochstein (photo by Andersen Ross/Getty Images)
By Rich Jaroslovsky
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Apple (AAPL) has largely pitched the iPad as an ideal way to consume media in all its many forms. Books, games, movies, magazines—step right up, folks, we've got it all for you in one magical device!
For the iPad to be truly revolutionary—Steve Jobs' word—it'll have to do a lot more than be a better e-book reader. The real promise of the device is that it has a chance to redefine what we think of as personal computing. And that has implications not just for Apple's own Macintosh business but for Microsoft's (MSFT), Google's (GOOG), and just about everyone else's.
For business users and others looking for a new productivity tool, the pound-and-a-half iPad offers a marriage of the always-connected ultra-portability of a wireless phone with the power and flexibility of a laptop or even a desktop PC. "I think this is the new Mac, I really do," says Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer of salesforce.com (CRM). "People aren't going to want Macs anymore. I think people won't want laptops anymore once they see what's really possible on great tablets."
It's safe to say no one at Apple, least of all Jobs, is eager to see the demise of its $999-and-up line of Mac laptops and desktops. (Apple declined to comment for this story.) But there are plenty of potential business customers who seem as ready to shift platforms as Benioff. More than half the people surveyed recently by Zogby International said they would use a tablet device such as the iPad for working outside the office, according to software maker Sybase (SY), which commissioned the poll. "Clearly, the iPad has a role to play in the business market," says Charlie Wolf, a Needham & Co. analyst who has a buy rating on Apple. "The demand appears to be far more diverse than I originally expected."
At $499 for the base model with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the iPad is in the same price ballpark as netbooks, the underpowered miniature laptops that run Microsoft Windows. True, the iPad has much less local storage—from 16 to 64 gigabytes of solid-state memory depending on the model, vs. the 160-gigabyte hard drive found on your typical netbook. What the iPad lacks in storage it tries to make up for with connectivity, which, for mobile business users, suggests the need for 3G service. That adds $130 to the cost of the unit, plus $15 or $30 a month for the data plans being offered by AT&T (T).