As somebody who was on the pointy end of Microsoft’s competitive activities for many years and responsible for a lot of marketshare analysis (and explaining it to Microsoft exec’s) I have always admired and respected Apple. If I had to explain “why” I guess it would look something like this:

• Hardware design and useability innovation
• Passionate user community
• Tech media love to talk about them 
• Relatively simple product line-up
• Ability to redefine and then “own” existing product categories

So I found last week’s iPad announcement interesting for several reasons…

Firstly, Apple were, I believe, bitten by months of iPad over-hype. While they have benefitted from free publicity in the past I suspect that right now there is a team of PR people in Cupertino working out how they do a better job of managing it next time around because, as they have discovered, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Secondly, the iPad is, aesthetically, substantially ahead of existing category products - tablet and slate PC’s - from OEM’s such as HP, Dell and Toshiba. Based on Apple’s track record, this isn’t surprising but I suspect that there are engineers and designers at the aforementioned OEM’s who are already working on designs which are a lot more iPad-like. It’s important to understand that those engineers don’t have to start from scratch, they just need to make existing hardware more iPad-like.

So this is where things get interesting…

In a couple of classic cases in the not-too-distant past, Apple’s offerings have – as defined by customer demand - been perceived as substantially more attractive than existing technologies and therefore completely changed what many people thought, at the time, were stable product categories:

• the iPod - which re-defined the existing MP3 player category
• the iPhone - which did the same for smartphones

In both cases existing vendors were caught flat-footed and have scrambled to catch up. In fact I think it’s even bigger than this - the MP3 category is effectively now “iPod and others” and the smartphone is now “iPhone and others”. So, given past successes, it’s not surprising Apple have chosen the “category re-invention” strategy again however I believe things are slightly different this time around in that:

• Apple have innovated the hardware but not the software (sorry, it is a big iPhone)
• PC OEM’s have performance-superior hardware in market today
• PC OEM’s now know what their product needs to look like (i.e. an iPad)
• Windows 7 provides the multi-touch OS such devices require

I therefore have a suspicion Apple will find this a somewhat different battle.

They have certainly re-ignited interest in the slate/tablet category, which the major PC OEM’s have not focused on for the last few years. The lead Apple currently has is primarily an ergonomic one backed up by the amazing delivery/lock-in/experience mechanism which is iTunes (disclaimer: I think the Windows iTunes client is appalling piece of software but the iTunes/App Store business model and the experience on iPod’s and iPhones is innovative and well-implemented). So…

Assuming that the HP’s, Toshibas and Dells of this world can make their hardware more aesthetically-acceptable (i.e. iPad-like) and assuming that there is a latent demand for iPad-like devices (I believe there is) I think the next 12 to 24 months will see a lot of innovation in this space and an explosion of new usage scenarios and opportunities. I can’t pick a winner but I can predict it will be a fascinating game to watch unfold in real-time.

I suspect somebody will invent an application to track all of the above. It will be interesting to see if Apple will let them deliver it via the App Store  :-)