I will be the first to admit that I am overly anxious to see, no, have the much anticipated Apple iTablet.
From Mashables Article: Why Apple’s Tablet Will Eat Kindle’s Lunch
by Barb Dybwad
One thing that seems increasingly clear is the market has been dancing around the question, “what is the perfect computing form factor between smartphone and full notebook?” for some time. The unexpectedly popular netbook craze is one answer to that. I think Apple’s tablet will be another.
Moreover, I think the Apple Tablet will be disruptive to the still formative eReader and digital publishing industry. Amazon is the current forerunner there, with the popular Kindle taking the lead over earlier player Sony and smaller companies like iRex, FoxIt and Bookeen. They’re already sitting right on top of a pile of published works to distribute, and right now their vertical strategy is almost the only game in town.
But it won’t be for long. And there are some major corners of the publishing industry who haven’t quite chosen sides yet: newspapers and magazines. Some in those camps are flirting with the forthcoming Plastic Logic Reader, and others are poking at the idea of developing their own hardware devices and trying to build their own vertical markets for content.
In other words, the time is right — for Apple to swoop in and steal the show the way they did when the music industry was struggling to find the answers to how to go digital gracefully. Let’s take a look at why an Apple Tablet would not only be a timely device, but could be poised to be a powerful player in the shift to digital publishing.
