Comments on: Consumption Pad

By: Aaron Houssian

Aaron Houssian — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:04:46 +0000

Gaagan,
I liked how you illustrated your points with some hard numbers, and I agree with the fact that by closing off flash they are forcing much more through the app store and will therefore make a lot more money out of it. I wonder, though, about your penultimate statement: “So the restrictions Apple has on iPad make much more business sense than usability sense.” There is certainly a business case for this as we’ve seen, and I disagree with Mike above, this has nothing to do with network capacity as many many iPads will be on WiFi. Really the application centric view that totally obscures any file related system makes the whole experience easier to handle and much more stable, add in the lack of flash support so that most of the content is apple reviewed then that gives Apple a tremendous amount of control over the user experience, which is what I really think they are going for. Again there is a compelling business case for it, but they really want to make the experience compelling, simple, and free of all the problems that traditional PCs still suffer from.

By: Gagan

Gagan — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:50:57 +0000

@Mike- looks like you might be right, its very evident in the kind of investments AT&T plans for the next year. (http://bit.ly/d6Wr9A).

But, in the case of iPad-Wifi it still does not make sense. But then it would be a tricky PR situation for bothe AT&T and Apple, if u enable flash only for them .
btw. People already do heavy Youtube watching on the iphones- that seems to work.

I guess that is where the open model of the customer deciding what to choose with the Andoid OS comes into the picture- hope to see more of the “TouchPads” this year.

By: Kirti

Kirti — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:48:19 +0000

I really like the “behind-the-scenes” strategy analysis.

By: Mike Lettmann

Mike Lettmann — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:46:55 +0000

Gagan, I agree with some of your points, but I must point out the real reason, and also the most important reason, Apple does not support flash on their mobile devices. The network (i.e. AT&T) would not be able to handle that mass amount of data usage. I can only imagine how clogged AT&T’s already bogged down 3G network would be if users could watch streaming video on Hulu, for example. Flash will most likely only be available when the wireless network proves they can handle that amount of data and considering the fact they still have issues with the CURRENT usage, I have a feeling it will be a looooong time before I’m watching Hulu on my iPhone, iPad, iTablet, or whatever ‘i’ there may be.

By: Gagan

Gagan — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:48:41 +0000

@Umair Qayyum: as a matter of fact, I had hoped for a cloud OS from this iPad, for the very same reason. They could sell apps for practically everything. But, I think we as users are not yet ready for a leap of faith in keeping everything on the cloud. The machine based app-store is the nearest Apple can be to a cloud based economy.

@Jaspreet Apple has already been through such litigation, so I assume they are ahead on the experience curve : http://bit.ly/9oCoVt
btw the Fijitsu case is weak as they only applied for a trademark but never got one: http://bit.ly/cMlslN

By: Jaspreet

Jaspreet — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:29:08 +0000

Nice analysis. Any comments on Fujitsu’s lawsuit plans on trademark breach by Apple over the name “iPad”.

By: Vinay

Vinay — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:04:21 +0000

Very nice analysis… I love the business thinking, and looking at bigger reasons beyond the obvious ( usability , UI ones)

We have to deal with a lot of this working on Vodafone app store and selling Vodafone content( music, games, apps) through phone.

By: Umair Qayyum

Umair Qayyum — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:14:55 +0000

Gagan, I agree with your analysis. The financial discussion is also worth mentioning, clearly shows the margins in software and licensing are much larger then hardware. It is the Apple-Cloud that they are going after, or you can say, milking the app cow as much as they can.