The announcement of Apple iPad turned out to damp squib. Expectations were so high for the next big thing but turned out nothing but a bigger iPhone. Worst part is again pay for the additional data plan for connectivity with their preferred network provider. Can it compete with kindle e-book reader? Big question since it is not based on e-ink and is not going to give the illusion to reading a real book. Hopefully Apple has got some secrets (may be better gaming experience) down the sleeve to sell their recent innovation iPads. May be few design engineers who want to visualize things can hand draw stuffs just like tablet. Other than that I feel it is still running iPhone OS with no multitasking (concurrent applications running) or limited multitasking.
One good thing that impressed me is the strategy to switch to their custom made 1 GHz (POWER (RISC) architecture of the kind of ARM) processor based on their recent PA acquisition. This translates to more $s per product sold. No more Intel's Atom and TI’s OMAP and other processors for time being. Certainly this is going to bring some differentiation in short run but the continued success depends on how long they can sustain their processor/platform road map.
It will be interesting to see how the promising OMAP4 (multicore heterogeneous processor architecture) based products fare in the market place. One thing for sure, the strategy of Apple’s is to stress the importance of good application processor (ARM based) + optimized system software to meet the power/performance numbers. Since the mantra of the day is “iPad running 10 hrs in a single charge".
One good thing that impressed me is the strategy to switch to their custom made 1 GHz (POWER (RISC) architecture of the kind of ARM) processor based on their recent PA acquisition. This translates to more $s per product sold. No more Intel's Atom and TI’s OMAP and other processors for time being. Certainly this is going to bring some differentiation in short run but the continued success depends on how long they can sustain their processor/platform road map.
It will be interesting to see how the promising OMAP4 (multicore heterogeneous processor architecture) based products fare in the market place. One thing for sure, the strategy of Apple’s is to stress the importance of good application processor (ARM based) + optimized system software to meet the power/performance numbers. Since the mantra of the day is “iPad running 10 hrs in a single charge".
