What Innovation Could an Apple Tablet Offer?

by Braden Kelley

With all of the internet chatter about Apple's rumored tablet computer, I've been asking myself two questions:

1. Does it make sense for Apple to make a tablet computer?
2. What innovation could an Apple tablet offer?

These questions are not as easy to answer as they may appear at first glance. The main reason? When it comes to technology, just because technically you can make something, it doesn't mean commercially that you should. Technology often begins maturing before consumers are aware of the need or pain that the solution addresses and before the minds of consumers can visualize how it fits into their lives. So, when we look at the Apple tablet chatter and Question #1, we have to ask ourselves:

What is the proven or imminent customer need that an Apple table computer would resolve?

Tablet computers have been around for decades and Tablet PCs have been around since 2001 (offered by multiple vendors including Toshiba, HP, etc.). Tablet PC's have achieved very low market penetration in that eight years (outside of certain vertical success stories), but still every manufacturer has one.

There is already a MacOS driven tablet computer for sale - the Modbook - and it is not exactly flying off the shelves. Competitors are making noise about new tablet computers, too. Microsoft is reportedly working to launch a new Tablet PC platform called Microsoft Courier and there are reports of Android-based tablets coming soon too. All this noise despite Tablet PC sales being only a small fraction of overall PC sales. So what gives?

Well, computer manufacturers believe that a shift may occur to a new computing form factor in the same way that PC sales started shifting from desktop computers to laptop computers a few years ago. But despite Tablet PC's being out before netbooks by several years, it was the netbook that took off, not the Tablet PC.

At the same time, consumers are shifting a portion of their computing from desktops and laptops (and even netbooks) to the emerging class of always-connected handheld computers (Apple iPhone, Motorola Droid, new Blackberry devices, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, etc.). Hardware manufacturers are making their bets now and have been for the last several years to maintain a complete product range and guard against any potential shift away from desktop and laptop PC's. There are even rumors that Dell may make a mobile phone.

If Apple launches a Tablet PC, they will not be successful, but I don't think that a traditional Tablet PC is what Apple is looking at. Apple does not launch me-too products. Apple seeks to launch products that offer greater value than the competition and products with new benefits so that they can justify higher prices and margins than the competition.

In isolation, my answer to Question #1 would be - No, it does not make sense, for Apple to make a tablet computer. There is no proven customer need that an Apple Tablet PC could solve.

BUT, there are some imminent customer needs that Apple could solve, IF it could create enough compelling innovation (see Question #2).


So what innovation could Apple offer and how would it satisfy imminent customer needs?

Well, electronic book readers haven't exactly taken off yet (Amazon still won't disclose how many Kindles they've sold - always a sign of hype), but prices are dropping and the recognition of their value in the minds of consumers is growing.

At the same time, most households own one or more portable DVD players and often one or more gaming consoles (including portable gaming devices) and one or more portable music devices. These taken together with the emerging market for electronic book readers, represents a huge number of portable entertainment devices.

Now, the screens for an electronic book reader and other portable entertainment devices are very different, but could Apple find a way to combine the two types of screens together in a single device? The Barnes & Noble Nook does this in a very primitive way. Apple could create some very interesting innovations to create a whole new form factor and create a whole new portable entertainment device category at the same time, one that:

1. Combines an e-ink display with a color LED-backlit LCD


2. Wirelessly connects to an iMac, Macbook, wireless keyboard, projector or other peripherals


3. Connects to your HD television


4. Is good enough at gaming to challenge game consoles for living room supremacy


5. Would provide a better video viewing experience than an iPod Touch or iPhone


6. Has the potential to disrupt the book industry even further


7. Has the potential to disrupt the video gaming and DVD markets even further


8. Has the potential to disrupt the Mac applications market (expanded App Store anyone?)


9. Integrates new human-computer interfaces like the iPhone did when it came out


10. Does something else that I can't imagine because I'm not close enough to the technology

This list, along with the imminent customer needs, makes it look reasonable for Apple to launch another portable form factor, but it doesn't make sense to bring out a device in the $1,000-$2,000 price range. So, if Apple comes out with a tablet, it won't be a computer per se, but more likely a portable entertainment device that happens to also have some computing capabilities. Kind of like the iPhone...

What do you think? Will Apple do it?

Will new display technology like that of Pixel Qi allow Apple to disrupt the Kindle by offering a device that combines the readability of an e-ink screen with the color and video capabilities of an LCD?

Will you buy one in the $499-599 price range? What about for $299-399 range if it is subsidized by a mobile carrier (probably Verizon or Sprint)?

Can this concept succeed until 4G is broadly available (2011 or 2012 for the USA)?

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Hulu Fast Becoming a Key Part of a New Industry Architecture

by Idris Mootee

Here are pictures of the Idea Couture team running several days of long sessions at the MIT. Jeff, Partick, Adam and Cheesan were happy with the progress to date and I am so looking forward to see the first milestone. It is just a great project and a great client/partner. Everyone is excited.

While we are on MIT, I came across some early research from MIT Media Lab on "Emotionally Reactive Television", it is a very interesting concept. The idea was from the time TV was created, watching TV is considered as a static activity. TV audiences have very limited choices to interact with TV, such as turning on/off, increasing/decreasing volume, and traversing among different channels. The working thesis is that TV program should have social responses to people, such as affording and accepting audience's emotional feeling with the growth of technologies. This paper presents HiTV, an Emotionally-Reactive TV system using a digitally augmented soft ball as affect-input interfaces that can amplify TV program's video/audio signals. HiTV transforms the original video and audio into effects that intrigue and fulfill people's emotional expectation. This is a super cool idea.



Some people think media should all be free. Just imagine a world where every form of media as we know is accessible for free. Is this the future? We're reaching an industry breakpoint in the world of media, fight between pirates, broadcasters, entertainment labels, demanding consumers heats up, the stakes will get higher, and higher.

The convergence of PC and TV will accelerate. I've participated in debates and forums around the three screen convergence scenario in the telec industry. That means one provider who can deliver a converged/integrated video/entertainment experience to the TV, PC, and mobile device. This is the telcos' dream. The idea is, you're watching something on your TV and you have to leave, you can continue to watch it on the go or so you pause it. Is this something we all wanted?



Analyst Laura Martin (Soleil Securities) crafted a worst case scenario for broadcast media. Martin believes Hulu will wipe out the network television business as we know it. In a recent report, she estimates that the online video hub will cost TV networks $920 per viewer in advertising if their audiences are cannibalized by Hulu. She believes the bulk of viewing on Hulu is indeed taking eyeballs from TV. It definitely makes some sense but there are still many wild cards.

Earlier In May she warned that the entire $300 billion market valuation of the television industry is threatened by the shift of programming from TV to the Web. Spearheading the overthrow of TV-as-we-know-it is Hulu, the premium video site backed by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney that offers content from the 120 partners. Martin is very confident that Hulu will succeed in the long term. With more than 38 million monthly viewers who watched 457 million streamed videos, it is 6th-most-visited video site, ahead of competitors like AOL, CBS Interactive and the Turner Network, according to comScore.


Hulu is seeding the value migration for its TV network creators as more content that becomes available on Hulu, the more likely it is that consumers will cut the cable cord altogether. Together with that trend is the less attractive economics of online video to advertisers, which offers higher CPMs but fewer ads. The industry estimates that Hulu runs four ads each hour at a $50 CPM compared to 32 ads during each hour of programming on TV at a $35 CPM. ($1,120-$200 = $920). Hulu did not disclosed actual ad sales or ad rates.



The TV everywhere idea is not new. Except it is getting real. I am not sure if it is so simple. There is a lot of uncertainty about the speed of deployment of new technologies and services, and of their adoption driven innovative user experience design. Hence the implications for spectrum demand and management of all these changes are far from clear; and convergence raises the fundamental question of whether current service definitions will make any sense by the end of next year.

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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Battle for Mobile Dominance Escalates

Lest anyone thought that Apple and Google's latest assaults on Nokia's dominance in the mobile space would go unchallenged, news came out today that Nokia is acquiring the rest of Symbian that it did not already own.

This would be interesting news by itself, but Nokia, recognizing that its future as a handset manufacturer is at risk ratcheted up the competition at the same time.

How are they doing this?

By making the bold and correct move of making Symbian instantly the largest open source mobile platform through its transfer to an entity called the Symbian Foundation. Nokia really has no other choice but to make this move. RIM is evolving to become a more capable competitor, PALM and Motorola are both making their last ditch efforts to save themselves, Samsung and HTC continue to gather strength, Apple is opening up and poised to gain significant share, and Google has already launched an open source platform.

So who stands to lose the most as a result of Nokia's move?

Probably Google...

Google launched the android platform to try and ensure their search advertising dominance moves from the desktop/laptop world into the mobile world. Developers looking for an open source solution for their applications (corporate or otherwise) are more likely to choose a more robust and widely adopted OS like Symbian now that they have the choice.

And also Microsoft...

Windows Mobile has the advantage of trying to pair with Windows Live and Windows Vista, but with open source Symbian on one side and Apple on the other, Microsoft may end up stuck in the middle. Not quite as a elegant as the Apple offering, and more expensive and closed than the Symbian offering. Now of course Linux hasn't overtaken Windows in the PC market, but the mobile market is more of a green field and people are still defining their expectations of a mobile OS. Unfortunately this environment favors Symbian and Apple.

Which of those two will win the race, remains to be seen...

What do you think?