This is the week that the highly anticipated new Apple Tablet makes its debut. Apple excels at keeping the spotlight on itself separate from other large-scale news, and this week is no different.
There have been many tablets released over the past couple of decades, but this tablet is from Apple. With Apple, it is never just about the hardware, as whiz-bang cool as Apple’s hardware designs usually are. With Apple, the important announcement will be about the “apps”, or in this case, the content that will be available for the Apple Tablet.
The original Apple iPod was intrinsically linked to Apple’s own iTunes application, and the music industry was changed forever. Although there were several music distribution models out there already, such as Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and the Zune, Apple developed a proprietary store that was easy to use and quickly became the standard. People bought iPods to access the music tracks from the iTunes store. Thousands of record stores closed as people began buying single tracks instead of full CDs.
The Apple iPhone was just a pretty telephone until Apple opened its code to independent developers of applications that people didn’t even know they wanted. Today, Apple has sold billions and billions of apps for the iPhone; most people get the iPhone for the apps.
Something very similar will be advanced for the Apple Tablet. The announcement and the new hardware will not be just about the tablet, but about what content can be accessed by the tablet. Apple is looking beyond the “right now” and has already started inking deals with various media outlets including magazine and newspaper publishers as well as book publishers. Apple knows that the reason people will look at the Apple Tablet is always the “apps”—what they can do with the device, not the device itself. Amazon is already making changes to the Kindle, and the Apple Tablet hasn’t even been formally announced. As big as Amazon is, Apple is still the leader of the pack and intends to keep it that way.
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Written by: Pamela Hilliard Owens.
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