Small Fish, Big Pond

Ross Rubin writes a great article in his “Switched On” guest post at Engadget. I really agree with his basic premise that the iPad and future tablets aren’t really filling a gap that exists anymore.

Rewind back to 2001 when Ross mentioned the Handspring Treo. At the time I was rocking a Handspring PDA and had just purchased a new Dell laptop; for me at this point the gap that Steve Jobs referenced was already pretty much gone. The laptop gave me limited mobility with computing and for the times I didn’t want to bring my laptop I had the PDA which took my most needed computing abilities wherever I went. In fact when people asked me what it was I always told them it was a computer in my pocket.

Now I’m talking about computing from a productivity standpoint. I had basic web surfing abilities so long as I had WiFi, but my main concerns were for the productivity “apps” I had loaded on the PDA. So surfing youtube while on the bus was not really a concern.

In the present from a productivity standpoint not a lot has changed other than the small gap that existed for me in 2001 is basically closed now. My Smartphone is more capable than before and my netbook is more mobile than before.

This would explain the problems tablets have fitting in. From a productivity standpoint they’re a niche product because the gap they were supposed to fill has closed. They’re remaining use it recreational, so you can watch youtube from you bed or use the web, movies, and games in situations where the smartphone is too small but you don’t want to whip out a laptop.

In which case the iPad is perfectly positioned but won’t have the ubiquity that the iPhone did. And any tablets that follow will either be deemed a non-tablet by the community (full OS convertible for instance), or just a big smartphone.