Envy in the 10" variety

Craig Mundle, Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer, must take lessons from his boss Steve Ballmer.   At a lunch in Sydney he was quoted as wondering whether the Apple iPad would "remain with us or not."   He argued that the land between smart phones and laptops is not likely to stay around - more and more of our work will be done on phones.   He envisages the (Microsoft, now there's a hint) Kinect (which seems to be selling pretty well) being the connective device in the future.   People would lose the thing they carry around and simply connect to the cloud.


Andy Lark, Dell's global marketing head, said (also in Sydney) that he thought the iPad would succumb to the open standard of the Android platform.  He commented "Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex,”   Lark argued that with a keyboard and a mouse and a case you would be spending "$1500-1600."   Evidently math is not one of Lark's strong suits - even assuming you bought a high end iPad ($829) and the all the other stuff - the total price might reach $1150.   But from my time with using the iPad, I bought a keyboard which I do not use much and no mouse.    Dell won't release its' 10" competitor to the iPad until later this year.


Stephen DeWitt, a VP at HP said in Las Vegas "Apple's relationship with partners is transactional, completely. Apple doesn’t have an inclusive philosophy of partner capabilities, and that's just absurd,"   That may be true but I expect we will not be seeing as many HP printers on the Apple website in the future.  HP, by the way, is betting the Palm operating system (it bought the company last year) will be an effective challenge to the iPad juggernaut.


The reality is that no one knows where this space is going, even Apple.  Like the iPod Apple put its footprint in the space first.  But it is likely to evolve as people continue to find new ways to use this kind of device.   Right now Apple has 15 million units in the marketplace.   That seems like a much better place than the Avenida de la envidia.