iPad: Apple’s Next Game Changing Gadget

iPad may not be as original as iPod (since we have seen so many i-gadgets in the past couple of years) but it looks very exciting. In case you haven’t noticed, Apple has been teasing us fans with the idea of releasing a netbook, a tablet, or an iPod XL for a while now. iPad is essentially all of those and more. If you told me a year ago that the year 2010 would be the year of tablets, I wouldn’t bet my house on it. But you can make a good case for it today. With Apple iPad, Apple fans are going to get the tablet they have been waiting for. The device is expected to use the same operating system as iPhone, letting you take advantage of the app store to get more done on your tablet. You can also view photos, videos, and even read e-books (beware Amazon Kindle). So it’s not tough to see how iPad will be a game changer.

Since Apple iPad will act as multiple gadgets fit into one let’s see what it’s potentially capable of:

iPad as a Netbook: netbook have been around for a while now, and the market is growing fast. While the margins are not too high for manufacturers, they do make a lot of sales, so netbooks have been a big help to the notebook market even in these tough times. Apple has said in the past that it will not associate itself with the netbook brand. With iPad, it won’t have to. iPad may not be a fully fledged computer, but it’s large screen and OS enable users to blog and tweet on the go. As long as you have access to the apps in the App Store, the sky’s the limit with iPad.

iPad as a Tablet: we have been teased about a tablet Mac for quite a while, and while this is not a fully-fledged tablet Mac, it’s close enough. If you like using your hands to do things on your iPhone, you are probably going to like iPad very much. Who knows. Maybe iPad’s success will lead to Apple reconsidering its decision not to release those “tabletbooks.”

iPad as an e-Book Reader: it will be very interesting to see how Amazon reacts to this development. Amazon did release its Kindle app for iPhone a while back. But iPad can directly compete with Kindle DX. It may not come with E-ink technology, but it’s capable of doing many more things than a Kindle. Maybe this move will make Amazon make major improvements to Kindle.

Let’s not forget that you can probably make calls from your iPad as well. So it is essentially a digital power house that can do a lot more than you can with regular netbooks. We don’t know too many details about this new product, so it’s easy to speculate. But if Apple does price this gadget in the $500-$700 range, it’s going to be a hit. Apple may be controlling and mean these days, but it certainly knows how to excite its fans.

Your take: is iPad a game changer? How so?