I just published this whitepaper for our affiliate mobile application development business, Codex Development. Here's a few pages of the text. For the entire whitepaper as a PDF, download it for free at http://www.codexdev.com/research.

Apple Tablet Myths — the impact of a multitouch enabled tablet device on the market

Summary

On January 27th, 2010, Apple is due to announce a new piece of hardware. Many are presuming it will be the long-predicted “Apple Tablet,” “iTablet” or “iSlate” as it has been labeled by the press.

While many people have ventured predictions about the features, look and feel, of such a device, few have looked at the real reasons why Apple feels that now may be the time to release such a device into the market.

The predominant belief is that Apple’s Tablet will succeed simply due to the popularity of the iPhone and the incredible buzz around the product. Conversely, a significant minority of analysts believe the tablet is merely a product of overhyped PR and, with a lack of useful applications, will soon fail.

In this white-paper, we attempt to debunk both of these myths by providing an analysis of what we think Apple’s vision is for the tablet. At the same time, we explore the potential ecosystem of an Apple device in a tablet-like format in order to understand what killer apps may hold the key to its success; discover how Apple’s device can differ from competitors; and study what impact it will have on the budding but already crowded mobile device market.

A Tough Tablet to Swallow

The conception of Apple’s Tablet could be traced back to the ill-fated Newton “Personal Digital Assistant” of the early 90s. A product line ultimately killed by Steve Jobs upon his return to Apple, the Newton had breakthrough features such a pen-driven touch screen, handwriting recognition, and an innovative OS which ran on low power consumption processors for handheld devices.

However, the Newton would share the fate of dozens (if not hundreds) of tablet-like computers which followed: consumers and business users struggled to find real-world applications which would leverage these new technologies effectively. The handwriting recognition, in particular, was widely ridiculed in the popular press, and with no suitable application which clearly benefited from freehand notation, there was simply no clear reason why people should have bought a Newton.

More recent years have spawned a multitude of computers with either tablet or “hybrid” form factors that allowed the user to detach the keyboard or flip it out of sight. The “Tablet PC” name became the most popular version of the tablet, running a version of Windows XP Professional with various add-ons, including handwriting recognition, rudimentary speech recognition, and the “Windows Journal” which provided a place for digital ink notations to be stored.

Unfortunately, many of these Tablet PCs quietly met the fate of the Newton. While “in the labs” they showed promise, in the wild, they simply failed to flourish. Businesses and developers who invested in them could only find niche uses for the touch technologies, and without effective handwriting or voice recognition, the lack of a physical keyboard became a hinderance.

Tablet APIs, functionality, and features continue to be integrated into the Windows 7 platform, as well as Mac OS X (where no Tablet hardware exists), but the few available statistics on market share show tablets occupy less than 1% of computing device sales.

[For the entire whitepaper, download it here.]

What’s in it for Me?

So if the tablet as a concept never found traction in the market, what future applications are going to give it more appeal?

In 2002, Microsoft argued that the tablet is the ultimate mobile device especially for those “road warriors” and “corridor warriors” who didn’t have their desktop or laptop with them at all times. At the time, it was thought that the laptop form factor (especially considering the laptops of 2002) was large and bulky. The author even goes as far to say that, “one reason for [the tablet’s potential] is the negative social aspect associated with laptop use in meetings.”

This quote is indicative of the flawed assumption that many of the Tablet PC manufacturers made for many years past 2002: that the Tablet PC was to be a super-portable version of the laptop which would find its way into the workplace based on its good looks and discreet size.

As we know today, such predictions could not have been more wrong. Not only have laptops become the norm in many business meetings, but they have also become required in many higher educational institutions. In addition, laptop form factors have become smaller and more portable, retaining the keyboard — the input device of choice for all digital generations.

Some attribute the lack of acceptance of the Tablet PC design to technical shortcomings, because their processing power and battery life simply can’t handle the needs of advanced functions like accurate handwriting and voice recognition.

However, the Tablet PC suffers in obscurity not because of the lack of these features. In fact, one can argue that today, with processing power available in orders of magnitude above those of 2002, that technologies which were marginal at the time (such as the Newton’s handwriting recognition) could easily have been improved had demand been there. In fact, Windows 7 includes even more “Tablet PC Improvements” such as Tablet math, better handwriting recognition, and multitouch.

Yet the existence of these technologies on hardware which has better battery life, more processing, and advanced multi-touch sensitive screens have created nothing more than a few more “Tablet PC”-like products with little more function than more advanced Kindles.

So if businesses and consumers haven’t bought into the Tablet PC as a concept, what can Apple do to make it a success this time around? The clues might be found by looking at what Apple did right with the iPod and iPhone; and then also by analysing recent consumer trends, which have changed significantly since the Newton.

The iPod is Flat

Before the iPod and iPhone, MP3 players and mobile phones had very similar issues within their respective categories. While in both cases (unlike the Tablet PC), overall unit sales of MP3 players and mobile phones weren’t a concern, the categories were highly competitive, with different devices competing on lists of features and price. Apple shook up the market, and ultimately won the war, by questioning the fundamental assumptions for consumer behaviour.

The assumption was that MP3 players were for playing music which the user had already purchased and would then “rip” and place on the device. MP3 player manufacturers before the iPod’s inception optimised the “playing” experience, focusing on music capacity, portability, and audio quality.

Apple realised that the primary purpose of the iPod was not just to be a media player. Rather, they understood that the iPod was digital delivery device which completed the connection of record companies and their music to people’s ears (and wallets). While at the time of the iPod’s release, it did lead in storage size compared to other MP3 players of the era, the reason that it has continued to be the market leader is not features, but rather the ecosystem in which it lives. In the case of the iPod, the ecosystem is the iTunes Music store and the record companies who continue to feed it with new music and videos every day.

Similarly, before the advent of the iPhone, the assumption had been that mobile phones were for making calls and sending emails. Once again, Apple’s realisation was that the mobile phone had a greater purpose; it would be yet another easy to use, seamless platform for digital delivery, this time delivering maps, full websites, email, and mobile information wrapped in apps.

In both cases, Apple realised that the device wasn’t the end product. Rather, each device was simply the last few feet of a pipeline of digital content delivery. In addition, the fundamental design of each device and its interfaces takes in account this shift in understanding about the role that each device takes in its ecosystem. Ironically iTunes, the same channel which the music industry loves to hate for its aggressive margins, and which similarly developers complain about for its slow time to test and release their apps, is the primary reason that the devices were successful in the first place.

Both devices actually removed features to allow the consumer to access content quickly and easily. The best example of this is the iPhones single touchscreen interface. Apple, when developing the interface elements for the phone, left out any traditional keypad or keyboard and instead created the first useable software-based keyboard on a popular mobile device. While initially a hotly debated interface decision, the basis of their decision was this: Apple wasn’t interested in optimising the interfaces for the phone and messaging interfaces, which already had crowded and highly competitive market spaces. Instead, they chose to optimise for mobile applications and content delivery, which meant a single large touchscreen with incredible, ground-breaking capabilities, such as multi-touch and high resolution screens.

In many ways the interface is so straightforward that in some contexts it seems downright rigid. In fact, the interfaces and Operating Systems on both devices allow very little customisation, especially compared to what “knobs and dials” are available on most desktop systems. It’s not that Apple is philosophically opposed to customisation or open platforms. Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system, is much more open than the PC, with some of its underlying source code available in open source and plenty of opportunities for software installation and customisation. Rather, Apple recognises that when a device like the iPod or iPhone is part of a consumer ecosystem, it must serve that primary purpose to a level of perfection, even to the detriment of flexibility. By the sales figures, this design choice works well for consumers and Apple alike.

Sowing the Seeds of the Tablet Ecosystem

Of course, understanding that an ecosystem is needed to create superior platform to its competitors is quite simple. Particularly for a new device like the fabled tablet, the critical questions are (1) What is the equivalent ecosystem? (2) What needs to happen to create this ecosystem? (3) How can this device be designed in order to fit most naturally into that ecosystem?

The answers to these questions lie not in Apple’s products, but in how consumer trends and digital media have moved on since the days of the Newton. Our hypothesis is that Apple’s next-generation device, if it is released in early 2010, will rest on a complex delivery mechanism for digital content and content creation, in a way that no other company has approached before.

To understand this ecosystem, it’s important to look at four key trends in the computing market today. We label these trends as follows:

Netbook 2.0
Kindle IIc
Social Media Computing
Revolutionary Interfaces

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[To read more, download the entire whitepaper as a PDF for free here.]