{"id":312354,"date":"2010-02-12T09:49:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T14:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35848"},"modified":"2010-02-12T14:16:20","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T19:16:20","slug":"three-industries-apple-ipad-will-disrupt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/312354","title":{"rendered":"Three Industries Apple iPad Will Disrupt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple is prepared to start selling TV shows for one dollar<\/a> to build interest in its celebrated new iPad. Today, television shows on iTunes sell for $2.99, but Apple is hoping that the reduced price will either juice interest in its new shiny hardware and\/or stoke overall TV episode sales. <\/p>\n

But this is about more than TV. Apple is starting a small revolution in three big categories. <\/p>\n

The first is with the e-reader market. Apple’s competitive advantage in
\nthis world is not books — Barnes & Noble and Amazon have been in
\nthe book business a lot longer than Apple — but entertainment.
\nTo be successful to potential e-reader buyers, Apple will market the
\niPad as an all-encompassing entertainment hub that, oh by the way, can
\nalso read books. That means building an e-book platform but also the
\napparatus for consuming music, television, movies and forthcoming
\ndigital platforms. The e-reader world is responding. Amazon recently acquired<\/a> a touch screen technology company and is
\nrumored to be building a color screen in response to the iPad. <\/p>\n

The second level Apple is testing is the TV market. Having
\nrevolutionized the a la carte music market by selling individual
\nsongs on iTunes, Apple is moving on to the a-la-carte television market
\nby selling individual TV shows on iTunes for a dollar. This will be a
\nfascinating move to watch because the TV market has long been the
\nopposite of a-la-carte. On TV, it’s all about bundling: cable charges
\nviewers for access<\/i>
\nto thousands of shows at one flat rate. Even Netflix, which rents and
\nstreams TV shows and movies, charges a monthly fee for X number of
\nrentals rather than charging individually for specific shows. People are used to
\npaying for television, but (unless they’ve been downloading TV episodes
\nfrom iTunes already) they’re not used to paying for individual pieces
\nof TV content. We’ll see how this shakes out.<\/p>\n

The third level Apple is challenging is the computer market. The Apple
\niPad is a simple personal computer. It can run Microsoft Word*, it can
\naccess the Web, and do other computery things. But the Apple iPad can’t multitask — not yet anyway — so it
\ncannot be a first-order work computer. The difference between the iPad
\nand other personal computers — and I think this is key — is that most
\nPCs are work<\/i> machines on which you can procrastinate<\/i>, whereas the iPad is an entertainment<\/i> machine on which you can work<\/i>. That’s a big difference and the iPad’s profit margin relies partly on consumers’ willingness to move into the second category.<\/p>\n

*As commenters point out below, Apple has not announced that the iPad will run Microsoft Word, only that it will be compatible with Word.


\n

\n Email this Article<\/a>
\n Add to digg<\/a>
\n Add to Reddit<\/a>
\n Add to Twitter<\/a>
\n Add to del.icio.us<\/a>
\n Add to StumbleUpon<\/a>
\n Add to Facebook<\/a>
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple is prepared to start selling TV shows for one dollar to build interest in its celebrated new iPad. Today, television shows on iTunes sell for $2.99, but Apple is hoping that the reduced price will either juice interest in its new shiny hardware and\/or stoke overall TV episode sales. But this is about more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}