Android and the iPad makes Steve Ballmer quiver in his boots.

I wonder if Android and the iPad keeps Steve Ballmer awake at night.

Why so?

The iPad is successful, not only as a consumer device but also as an enterprise device. If the results of the iPad are anything to go by, the Tablet is poised to be a very popular form factor.

But the iPad is effectively just one device (albeit the first one) in this new emerging Tablet space. It seems the majority of these devices will be running Android, and none seem to be running Windows.

Now consider this. Windows has risen to be the dominant enterprise operating system, despite of the fact that for most of it's existence the Windows platform has been inferior to the Unix/Linux/Mainframe platforms.

Consider how first DOS then Windows started out purely on - what was then - the low end of the computing market; the Desktop, and gradually started moving into more and more sophisticated applications, with each version getting incrementally better until Windows Server 2008, which can be used quite safely for high end computing tasks.

It was able to do this, partly thanks to Moore's law but more importantly by capitalizing on the familiarity of Windows by the people making the decisions, not to mention the shallow learning curve offered to people who had practically grown up with the OS.

Windows is an example of a disruptive technology, clearly illustrating the fact that's it's often easier to drive a low end product into the high end, than a high end product into the low end thanks to mass appeal.

Unfortunately Windows is no longer a low end product.

Windows 7 is optimized for desktops, it's not really designed for Tablets and touch screens, and so far it hasn't really featured much on any of the upcoming Tablets.

Now iPad aside basically every new Tablet is running Android, a low end operating system and based on the iPad's success; the Tablet is the new disruptive technology.

So lets suppose for a minute that Android becomes the dominant Tablet OS, and that the Tablet becomes popular enough that at least most knowledge workers and decision makers have one.

It's not inconceivable that those same knowledge workers and decision makers may easily decide to start using Android for other tasks, initially maybe for things like cheap Android powered terminals (even terminals calling Windows Apps via Citrix or Terminal services) for call center agents and then later for full desktop replacements.

Now you may be thinking "Huh! Android is a mobile OS" but consider that if it made the jump from a phone to a tablet, why couldn't it jump to a full desktop? I don't think many people envisaged Windows getting onto the server either.

Of course this is just speculation, the only successful tablet so far is the iPad, and it's too early to say if any of the multitude of Android Tablets (most of which haven't even been released yet) will be as successful. Furthermore it's still early enough for Microsoft to develop a compelling product for the Tablet space.

Microsoft - despite it's wide market range - Is dependent on it's desktop dominance. Steve Ballmer must be a very concerned man.

A few thoughts on the iPad

Being the resident Mac fan I thought I might add my $0.02 on the iPad.

Firstly the name is aweful, I can't believe that someone didn't start giggling the moment the suggestion was made. I have two theories about how this one got through; 1) The obvious : Steve Jobs made the suggestion therefore it was so. Or 2) The marketing guys were stereotypically stoned so that means a) no one thought much about the giggling and b) they were - well - stoned.

Secondly, yes, it is a large iPhone. Rumor has it that the iPad design has gone back and forth between the drawing board and prototype stage a couple of times, in fact it's technologies became the basis of the iPhone, Now the leaked sources pretty much confirmed that the iPad was going to be using the iPhone OSX as a basis so the way the OS looks and works was not at all surprising, but I'm rather dissapointed that Apple chose to so blatantly follow the physical look of the iPhone, after all, it is a design which - while being very pretty - is getting on in the years. Now it was probably too late by then, but I hope Steve is going "Oh crap why didn't we think of that" when he watched Avatar.

Thirdly it's not an iPhone at all. If you drill down into this logic you can quite easily make that argument that my laptop shares many of the characteristics of my iPhone by virtue of the fact that both can perform many of the same functions.

So what is the iPad then, it's not a laptop, it's not a netbook, it's not a phone, it's also nothing at all like Bill Gate's vision for the tablet PC way back in 2001.

The fact is that the iPad simply doesn't fall into any of the current categories, Apple has the rather daunting task of trying to create a completely new class of mobile device.

This is both a blessing and a curse.

If the iPad takes off, it will be great for Apple of course, being the pioneers in a new category, the problem of course is that in order for this new category to take off you need to have customers who have a reason to buy one.

In other words you need a killer application.

Now with that in mind here are a few things to ponder:

The starting price is $499, which will translate into about +- R5500 after import duties (unless the importers decide to milk us dry). This makes it cheaper than many smartphones including HTC's Android phones. It also falls in the same pricing bracket as many Netbooks.

It has quite an awesome battery life, You could use this device for most of the day, no boot up time and no hibernating.

The type of functionality being offered by the iPad is basically 100% of what most mobile office workers need from a computing device, my boss for example spends his entire work day in meetings and uses his PC for nothing but e-mail and documents.

I think therefore that there is potential for this device, however Apple is going to have to work harder to make that obvious.

Now in closing it's worth noting that the device simple had no way to live up to the hype surrounding it. It's a version 1.0 device, it has many flaws and omissions which Apple will need to address (although at the price you DO get quite a bit), So quite honestly It mightn't be bad idea to wait for version 2.0.