4 years with the iPad: the forerunner of the tablet format

El January 27, 2010 it was an important day in the history of technology. Just four years ago, an already deteriorated Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. Apple made the tablet a successful format by combining a manageable and more productive size in its product that reminded us of the laptop with the fluidity and intuitiveness of a mobile device. Since then, he has been a chair and there have been many companies that have entered this market since then.

Previous experiments in tablet format

The idea of ​​the tablet format has a long history. Many companies tried it without pain or glory since the 90s. Microsoft debuted in 2002 with its microsoft tablet pc, which ran Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Since then, many of its manufacturing partners have experimented in pure tablet, convertible and even hybrid format. However, the general public did not perceive them as something interesting. Its scope was limited to professional land, large offices and warehouses.

For the general public, before the tablet there was only the PDA that the courier used when taking a package home or from the warehouse waiter. Companies like Nokia already flirted with ARM processors and Linux-based operating systems, even in 2009 Verizon released Android-based tablets called Ultra and Vega with Tegra 2 processors from Nvidia.

The key to the success of the iPad

That great mass of consumers was not very aware of all this, perhaps due to the lack of belief in the approach and the arrival of the iPad was a breath of fresh air. Apple's product gave a concrete shape to what had been experiments. The public understood what it was about, given that it had the antecedent of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I was assimilating that I could undertake as many tasks as in these products but being more comfortable, having a screen where everything does not seem so small and where touch gestures were easier, given the clumsy fingers with almost no training in this type of interfaces of the general public.

Jobs defended on that stage a tool for everyday life. He placed the product in a middle ground between smartphone and laptop and people understood that it would make their lives easier. He outlined a number of tasks where that third way should be better than the other two formats. He named it the third category and assigned it the functions of browsing, email, viewing photos and videos, listening to music, playing video games, and reading books.

Beyond agreeing that all these things are better done on an iPad or tablet than on a laptop, the achievement of Apple, and Steve Jobs, was to convince us that they are.

One idea that Jobs emphasized in that famous presentation was convenience. A total success. The tablet format is really comfortable because of its resemblance to a book or a magazine. By being able to hold it in our own hands and enjoy touch control, we have a lighter and closer feel than the hard keyboard and mouse interface on the laptop. The main advantage with the smartphone is the screen size, an idea that phablets challenge now.

A format that is already the first personal computer

Since then, the iPad and tablets have been a hit. Those of Cupertino sold 14,8 million units of their first generation in their debut year, well above expectations. Every year and as the next generations arrived, that number has only increased. Although, its market share has been decreasing in the last two annual periods. They started at 90% in 2010 and now they are barely 35%.

The tablets are the new personal computer format in sales worldwide and many manufacturers have contributed and taken advantage of that brutal growth, while saving the fall in PC sales, two events directly related.

In 2013, 3,8 million tablets were sold in Spain compared to 1,7 million laptops and 910.000 desktop computers. This is a trend towards changing uses.

The success of the iPad has been very educational for the consumer and the numbers support it. In total, in these years of operation they have been sold at least 170 million iPadsThis without counting the Christmas campaign and the impact of the fifth generation of the 9,7-inch and the second of the 7,9-inch Mini.