The mighty iPad has landed
After months and years of rumors and speculations, Apple has finally unveiled as they say a magical and revolutionary product, the nearest thing but far superior then a so called breed of clunky and stodgy netbooks. Apple’s tablet – the iPad is almost here.
iPad appears to be giving some hopes to news paper outlets. All major news publications are scrambling to tweak their websites for iPad and are also working overtime to ink lucrative advertising deals and launch monthly subscription models.
The New York Times, whose iPad app was featured in Apple’s launch presentation for the device in January, has sold exclusive rights to ads on its iPad editions for the first 60 days to a credit card company.
The Wall Street Journal said it has signed up a slate of advertisers including FedEx and Coca-Cola to take advertising space at $100,000 a month.
With the price of exclusive ad deals reportedly ranging from US$75,000 to $300,000, publishers are able to defray the costs of developing downloadable versions, or apps, that package their content specially for the new device.
According to recent reprots, The Wall Street Journal is believed to have set a subscription fee of $17.99 per month.
A recent report by the market research agency comScore provided succour to publishers who hope that the iPad will generate a significant new revenue stream. It found that one third of likely buyers of the iPad were likely to read magazines and newspapers on it.
However, the iPad will also be connected to the internet, where similar content is available for free, suggesting that publishers will have to fill their apps with exclusive content to woo users.
Apple is now accepting pre-orders for the iPad, its new touch-screen gadget for reading books, watching video and surfing the Web. Electronics retailer Best Buy is gearing up for April 3rd launch nationwide.
IPads with Wi-Fi wireless connections will go on sale on April 3 for $499 and up. Apple Inc. says people can pre-order online and get it on April 3 where Saturday delivery is available.
Shoppers can also reserve an iPad online, then pay for it and pick it up at a local Apple store.
The iPad will also work with Bluetooth keyboards, and Apple will sell a charging dock with a built-in keyboard: That’s good news, but you’ll want to try out the on-screen keyboard yourself if at all possible before plunking down any money.
The iPad is a lot more reasonable than pundits were expecting — the conventional wisdom was that it would run $1,000 or so. Instead, the iPad starts at $499 for the version with 16GB of solid-state storage and no 3G broadband, and tops out at $829 for one with 64GB of storage and AT&T 3G. Apple is pricing its tablet to move — which is presumably why it lacks some features that most people expected it would have
