Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Mobile Convergence Starts With the iPad

It was only last summer that I was sitting at a local supermarket's deli section hacking away on my Macbook. I was too cheap to go home and turn on the air conditioner. I did that often. And if you think about it, the market was already cool. Why waste energy? Plus, I was spending money whenever I go. Now, there was a few instances when I wished it had 3G connection so that I could do some spur of the moment research.

At the time I had not rooted my G1 so that I can tether my laptop to it. I was able still able to get the information I needed because of the G1. Still, I thought, "why Apple? Why no 3G?"

Fast forward to today. By this summer, I'm sure I'll head out to the same deli but there will be some difference. I'll be working away on my portable device but instead of my Macbook, this device will likely be an iPad with 3G connection.

I can totally see that happen. And likelihood of this happen will increase greatly when the iPad starts to ship. The reason for this is that I'm in the camp whose opinion is that Steve Jobs did not show us everything the iPad is capable of. I can surmise what those reasons are but it's pointless since we'll know if I'm write in 50 or so days.

But the point is this: mobile devices, whether it's laptops, smartphones, or iPad or tablets like it are meant to be linked wirelessly to the Internet. So don't be surprise if the iPad is the first step of Apple adding wireless Internet access beyond just Wi-Fi.

Imagine Apple and AT&T offering a special iPod Touch model with 3G, possible dubbed "iPod 3G". Wouldn't that be something? Obviously, this is all speculation on my part. However, I don't think it's all that far-fetched. As a matter of fact, maybe people believe the killer app of the iPad isn't the bigger screen or what new features Apple offers but it's the fact that you can get 3G on the device without signing a multi-year contract.

So, we're less than 75 days from the release of the iPad 3G versions. Two months after that, It'll be summer again and I can't wait to be there at the moment when I can look back at a year ago and think how much mobile computing changed.

Revolutionary or evolutionary?

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