Friday’s UK release of Apple’s newest gizmo, the iPad tablet computer, will finally give people here the chance to get their hands on it, nearly two months after it first went on sale in the US. But while the iPad has given the tablet computer market a boost, it’s not yet ready for wide-spread enterprise use, according to Nigel Owens, general manager, EMEA, at Motion Computing.
Apple sold 300,000 iPads over the first weekend of release and reached one million sales after just a month. Demand for the device was so strong that Apple had to push back the international release date.
With demand for the product strong in the consumer space it seems inevitable that the iPad will eventually make its way into the business world, but it’s not yet ready to make that leap, Owens told CBR.
“It’s raised the temperature in the [tablet] market for sure,” he said. “With success in the consumer space and the fact that people will be used to using it there, it means they will want to use it at work, too. I’m sure we will see it in the enterprise space but it’s not ready yet – it can’t yet offer things like multitasking that we can.”
The lack of multitasking capabilities on the iPad and the iPhone has been a source of criticism from day one. Apple has addressed that issue in version 4 of its mobile operating system, but that will not be available until later this summer at the earliest.
Owens added that the enterprise market for tablet PCs is a very particular one and that consumer-based devices such as the iPad may struggle to find room in the market. “The market is asking where it fits. We’re trying to hit a particular market, our screen technology is pen-based because using a finger can be difficult and other tasks, such as writing your signature, can also be tough,” he said.
Motion Computing specialises in tablet PCs, with a strong presence in the medical, construction, education and government sectors. It recently announced the release of the industry’s first slate tablet PCs with Intel’s Core vPro processors.
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