iPad

Not much to add here – many argue that the Kindle program is struggling and this TV ad just reinforces the thesis. The video features a relaxed attractive female sunbathing next to a pool and reading on her device while a frustrated male sits next to her, holds an iPad and is unable to read due to sun glare.

The dialog goes like this:
Guy: Excause me, how are you reading that in this light.
Girl: It’s a kindle, $139. I actualy paid more for these sunglasses.

Not sure if this will help Bezos and his crew, but hey they gotta do something… One thing is for certain, the video got almost one million hits on youtube (while four previous ads got less than 300k views in ~4 months) – yet another proof that the iPad is popular and attracts attention.

Here is a yet another top app list, this time compiled by Craig Grannell and published by TechRadar.com. The source article with a ton of screenshots is here (ignore the fact that the URL says “Top 20″ while the actual article title is “Top 30″, the more the better…)

Anyhow, I am probably aligned with 70% of the picks, an app or two are missing here – yet, installing each of the listed items will not be waste of precious memory space.

Finally, each listing item has a link to the corresponding iTunes page and I also added a column with the iTunes ID for easier searching. You’ll notice that most of the apps are geared towards iPhone/iTouch users even though many of the listed apps have a corresponding iPad versions.

Enjoy!

01) Facebook (iTunes ID: id284882215)
02) Gorillacam (iTunes ID: id342972390)
03) RunKeeper Free (iTunes ID: id300226023)
04) Stanza (iTunes ID: id284956128)
05) Dropbox (iTunes ID: id327630330)
06) thetrainline (iTunes ID: id334235181)
o7) Skype (iTunes ID: id304878510)
08) Movies (iTunes ID: id284235722)
09) TonePad (iTunes ID: id315980301)
10) Thomson Reuters News Pro (iTunes ID: id314213167)
11) Twitter (iTunes ID: id333903271)
12) Comics (iTunes ID: id303491945)
13) Wikipanion (iTunes ID: id364195592)
14) Evernote (iTunes ID: id281796108)
15) Kindle (iTunes ID: id302584613)
16) Around Me (iTunes ID: id290051590)
17) Dictionary.com – Dictionary & Thesaurus (iTunes ID: id364740856)
18) Air Video Free (iTunes ID: id313056918)
19) Photoshop.com Mobile (iTunes ID: id331975235)
20) iHandy Level Free (iTunes ID: id299852753)
21) Instapaper Free (iTunes ID: id284942713)
22) PCalc Lite (iTunes ID: id300311831)
23) iBooks (iTunes ID: id364709193)
24) Red Laser (iTunes ID: id312720263)
25) eBay Selling (iTunes ID: id357878618)
26) eBay Mobile (iTunes ID: id282614216)
27) Google Earth (iTunes ID: id293622097)
28) XE Currency (iTunes ID: id364733584)
29) Shazam (iTunes ID: id364305715)
30) Bump (iTunes ID: id305479724)

comScore released a study focusing on internet users and their overall awareness, attitudes and opinions of the Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle and other tablet and eReader platfomrs.

Here is the summary of finding:

Consumers were asked several questions regarding their awareness of various e-readers and tablet devices and their past purchase behavior or intent to purchase these devices. The results showed very high awareness of the iPad out of the gate, with an aided awareness of 65 percent, the same as that of the Amazon Kindle e-reader.

Overall, consumers have demonstrated a high level of interest in these types of devices with between 58 percent and 69 percent of consumers having conducted online research of the top five devices. Amazon Kindle rated highest in terms of current device ownership at 6 percent of all Internet users, followed by Sony Reader at 4 percent. The iPad rated highest in terms of consumers seriously considering purchase over the next three months at 15 percent of Internet users, with the Kindle at 14 percent.

For the methodology and associated assumption hit the link above.

Here is a quick summary of a short but good interview (published back in January) with Paul Grim (GP at VC SunBridge) – the questions/answers revolved mostly around business impacts of the iPad release:

• The installed base of iPhone/iPod users will naturally migrate to this platform
• I don’t think this will significantly impact the Kindle’s prospects, but I do think it bifurcates the e-reader market.
• This is another giant leap toward the new human-machine interface paradigm.
• There are some obvious vertical segments that could be completely dominated by the iPad: healthcare, education, design, architecture, basically any field in which someone carries around a clipboard or simply has to move around a lot while working.

Paul blogs at GrimTimes.com

My quick take on the looming war between iPad and Kindle: given the specs and demoed GUI iPad will destroy kindle in every sense. The fact that five biggest book publishers (Hachette, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Penguin Group) are on board with iPad Amazon simply cannot compete provided their current hardware offering remains as it is (or incrementally improved).

Amazon senses the danger and they already increased the royalty cut for the publishers to 70% (70 percent of list price net of delivery cost) [as of 1/20/10].

Amazon states that authors get 7-15% of the list price for paper books and 25% of net for digital books. Needless to say, the 70% royalty looks like a good deal (it’s not as simple as this as Amazon requires that the price is below 10 bucks and that the digital offering includes bells and whistles like txt-to-spch)

70% cut sounds familiar? Yep, Apple pays 70% royalty to iPhone/iPad developers for apps sold via iTunes. Competition and market-forces at work? I don’t see anything else that would be a feasible explanation for Amazon’s gracious increase in publishers’ royalty from 50% to 70%.

Let the thousand flowers bloom…

PS

Check out the Delicious Library (DL) – former DL employees (Mike Matas, Lucas Newman, Tim Omernick) are some of the folks that helped with the iBooks’ overall design/look