Well every time Apple comes up with a new path breaking innovative product everyone in the industry goes into overdrive trying to predict who will be the key competitor that will bring down the Apple gadget i.e. the iPad in this case. Well the industry giants are for sure gearing up fr this battle. Round one: its Apple iPad vs HP Slate. The iPad is trademark Apple style with good enough hardware / software limitations put in place, the Slate is typical – Microsoft with all the functionality and OS freedom thrown in. The tablets compete with the netbook and ereader markets and with Apple’s appstore / A4 put in the picture the gaming consoles are also at a threat.
The battle already gets interesting when you just compare the hardware capabilities of the two. Apple has innovated on its part with a custom chip and left out the camera, USB ports etc; HP Slate is full blown with SD card slot, USB port, dual camera, HDMI output, 1080p playback & 3G. But you already know where they lose out – battery life. HP Slate has a 5 hour battery life as per leaked features, which is half of what Apple has managed on the iPad. On the pricing front though the HP Slate still manages to beat the iPad with more memory and 3G thrown in the base model @ $549!
Given the fact that Microsoft Windows 7 isn’t an OS that was made for tablets, the iPad scores with the iPhone OS being a light weight mobile OS optimized for touch use! Its clear that if Microsoft can get the Windows 7 working on tablets better than what Windows Mobile does for smartphones, they have a good product from HP coming up. The video’s are promising and the only thing left to counter is the killer app store! iTunes offers over 100,000 apps for the iPhone platform which iPad runs on. Leading game developers have their famous titles ported to the Apple tablet and web apps like Google’s Gmail are already in a custom iPad form. The newspapers, books and magazines that Apple throws in also makes the iPad a unique niche product that appeals to those who aren’t looking for a full blown computer in their hands, but something practically useful. IMO the competition here is not two tablets, but two DIFFERENT products with similar form factor.
Does the Apple iPad really fill a gap without key features like Multitasking and computer style storage on the iPad? Answer this and you have your choice made! You might also want to wait a few hours to see what Apple comes up with in iPhone OS 4.0 🙂