Time to take our Tablets?

Written by Alex Kidman Friday, 13 November 2009 11:24

I've been thinking this week about the Apple Tablet, buoyed by even more rounds of rumours speculating that it'll make some sort of appearance at the CES show in Las Vegas in January. Specifically, I've been trying to work out exactly where in Apple's product lines it'll sit.

The Tablet, it strikes me, is something that a certain proportion of consumers would like Apple to make. A bit like the Apple Netbook. I'd certainly buy an Apple Netbook if one came to market, but I do get why Apple doesn't make one, given that it doesn't fit into the product matrix in a comfortable position for the company. Introduce a MacNetBook, and suddenly the value equation for a whole host of Apple products goes out the window.

If there's one thing Apple doesn't tend to do, it's introduce an all-new product category that cannibalises an existing or ongoing one. Don't believe me? Why does the iPod Nano have a camera, but the Touch doesn't? Because that'd cut into iPhone sales. Why does the MacBook not have FireWire or an SD card slot? Because those are features that somehow "belong" on the MacBook Pro, which is the nice way of saying that Apple doesn't want you buying the cheaper model if those features matter to you. It might not be terribly nice to end consumers, but the business strategy is pretty sound.

So where does that leave the Tablet? There's been no end of speculation about such a device, and while the rumour mill isn't always a reliable critter, I think there's enough of a body of evidence to suggest that, yes, Apple is looking at such a device. The hype's building around the idea that it'll be a big media device, but again I reckon that means it hits barriers around existing and highly successful Apple products.

For a start, there's the tricky issue of pricing. Too costly, and nobody will buy one. Too cheap, and it'll eat up the market position for MacBooks to a certain degree, and iPhones to a huge degree.

Apple's got the iPhone into a pretty unique position. It's highly desirable in the general consumer mindspace, and the best efforts by Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola don't seem to be making much headroom there. Apple controls the iPhone's ecosystem with an iron glove. An iron glove with painful pointy spiky bits on it, if you're an iPhone developer and Apple yanks your App for whatever reason, but that's a discussion for another day.

An Apple Tablet would seem to occupy much of the same space, but with a larger screen, and larger-screen entertainment ideals. No doubt you'll be able to buy iTunes movies for a Tablet, and I can see that being a pretty good idea. eBooks also seem a very likely target, and having spent a couple of weeks testing out Amazon's Kindle, I can definitely see some room for Apple to improve upon matters there.

A lot of the reports (which feed on themselves in the classic Apple rumour style, re-reporting each other's shaky statements as "facts", as in this piece by the Sydney Morning Herald's Asher Moses suggest that content media will be the big play that the Tablet makes. That's all well and good in theory, but clearly there's a rather large stumbling block in place: the content providers themselves.

Apple's got such an iron grip on the iPhone because it, in essence, built the ecosystem and even the ideas behind it from the ground up. When iTunes launched, digital music delivery was still a very new idea, and most labels weren't all that convinced one way or the other. There wasn't much in the way of competition, and Apple grabbed itself a huge chunk of market share thanks to being an innovator with a hot product (what’s known as “first mover advantage”). That largely allowed it to dictate terms further down the track, and it's no secret at all that Apple, as a business entity, likes being in control.

The big media companies all know this now. Forewarned is forearmed, and I doubt Apple will be able to get the same kind of terms and controls over content as it’s enjoyed with the iTunes music and movie markets, unless it can once again innovate something truly new, a la the App Store.

There's no shortage of App stores for various devices now, but two years ago it was a bold new idea that nobody else was really bothered with. Without some kind of innovation in (I'm guessing) the delivery space, Apple's going to be competing with every other kind of rights buyer — PayTV, Free To Air, Newspaper vendors, Book publishers and the rest — in an open market. And will or would Apple be interested in giving up that kind of control?

What do you think? What would you be willing to pay for an Apple Tablet, and what features would make it a "must have" device? Discuss it with me at MacTheForum!