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Apple iPad 2: Fit for business?

Richard Goodwin looks at the hype surrounding the next-generation Apple iPad and ponders its business value.

By Richard Goodwin, 7 Feb 2011 at 09:50

We take a look at all the rumour, conjecture and leaks surrounding the as-yet-unannounced iPad 2 – the successor to the world’s biggest selling tablet. And ask: Is Apple’s latest tablet device ready for business?

Apple ushered in the tablet revolution last year and since then practically every other major manufacturer has jumped on the bandwagon. Indeed, a mere glance at the announcements and showcase list from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas illustrates this point profoundly.

Such has the tablet phenomenon been, Apple managed to shift more than 20 million iPads in 2010.

However, the tablet market in 2011 is a completely different beast than it was at the start of last year when Apple first introduced us to its iPad device. Google has got its act together with Android 3.0 and there’s a whole load of high-spec tablets poised to hit the market throughout the year. Something that has made Apple’s job with the iPad 2 that little bit harder.

So what can we expect from the iPad 2?

Size

A lot of early reports and speculation surrounding the second-generation iPad suggested that the iPad 2 would be a seven-inch device. If this had proved true it would have aligned Apple with its competitors and appeal to customers that wanted something a little more portable.

This doesn’t appear to be the case. The iPad 2 will remain the same size as the original iPad. Steve Jobs has even gone on record as saying: “We’ve done extensive testing and 10 in is the minimum tablet size.”

But what about the iPad’s form factor?

“The new iPad is thinner than the existing model and is essentially made from one piece of metal with no pins needed,” analyst Brian Blair told tech blog All Things Digital.

“We understand it requires a new type of manufacturing process as a result, similar to the company's unibody approach seen in MacBooks."

Both of these attributes could be good news for business users as not only will the iPad 2 be more portable and lightweight, it’ll also retain its netbook-like size which makes it an ideal work station for composing reports and detailed emails – anything smaller and you’re approaching smartphone territory.

Retina display

One of the biggest rumours surrounding the iPad 2 is that it will feature Apple’s latest display technology, Retina Display – like the iPhone 4.

While this would certainly be a massive USP for the iPad 2, experts and technophiles alike have contested it heavily. Some argue that the display would require too much power, and have a detrimental effect on the performance of the device.

Others have claimed that this isn’t the case, as the iPad 2 will feature a dual core processor and 1GB of RAM, which, with the right tweaks, could certainly take the additional CPU strain.

Here’s what GigaOM’s Apple Blog had to say on the matter: "You can be sure that Apple's Retina Display, or something very close, will make its way to iPad."

At present though, there’s no way of telling whether the iPad 2 will feature a Retina Display or not. Apple will not comment on speculation, so it’s basically a moot issue, meaning we’ll have to wait until the official iPad 2 keynote speech to find out for sure.

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3 comments

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The most valuable upgrades

For the business users of iPads (sales, service) the most important upgrades will be the video conferencing (connecting while in the field, not in the office), cameras (easily getting information into the pads without typing) and processing power. The processing power especially will eat into the laptops market given that there are many software applications that are not portable to tablets now. This will change soon.

Mark Walker
FatStax.com

By mark_fatstax on Monday Feb 7

Cortex

It seems unlikely that Apple would invest in the effort of purchasing it's own CPU design unit, create it's own chip (the A4) - and then switch to an off-the-peg CPU.

I agree on a dual-core design, but it's most likely to be a custom SoC.

Another minor point is that the iOS devices have been able to achieve better performance at lower CPU speed, due to tighter integration of hardware and OS, including things like making significant use of GPU acceleration.

Android is designed to be more flexible - at some cost in terms of performance - which is why some 1Ghz Android phones perform worse than even an older iPhone.

That's not a criticism of Android - it's just a consequence of flexibility. Like PCs it's a question of balancing components.

The real question is going to be who can make effective use of multiple cores - which will make CPU speed less relevant. iOS and Android SDKs have multi-threaded programming models, but as far as I know, the Playbook doesn't.

In terms of hardware, my simple guess is that the new iPad will bear the same relationship to the iPhone 4 that the original iPad did to earlier iPhone's. This would also mean they're using the same design language across most of their hardware.

I'd agree a retina display is unlikely - as doubling the resolution of the iPad would give it a higher resolution than most 23" screens. Which seems unlikely. . . .

By JulesLt on Tuesday Feb 8

What?

"In short, if Apple wants businesses to start taking its iPad devices seriously, which a lot of them already are, it is going to have to give IT departments more freedom to implement security measures into the device’s platform."

The included "which a lot of them already are" is absolutely true. But it does rather make the rest of the sentence into irrelevant garbage.

By Henry_3_Dogg on Friday Feb 11