1. To Stay in Touch: Since most hotels offer the option of wireless internet, your iPad can serve as a way to communicate with friends and family when you are abroad. It is lighter to bring along than a full laptop computer and it is also more affordable than roaming charges for a mobile phone. Use the device to video chat with family, send emails to colleagues in the office or chat online in your spare time with friends.

2. For Maps and Directions: Whether you are walking around a city, trying to find an isolated beach on an island or taking a road trip across Australia, an iPad can help to get you wherever you want to go. Download apps of city transit systems, road maps or just use the Google Maps app to help find your exact location from anywhere in the world.

3. Entertainment During Travel: Even when visiting the most exotic destinations on Earth you can expect to have some downtime. An iPad is a great way to pass the time while on a train, bus, plane or while waiting to check in. It can be a nice way to unwind before going to bed at night and can be easier to pack than several books.

4. To Review Restaurants and Nightlife: Discovering new restaurants is an exciting part of travelling. If you are a food enthusiast or just want to pick the top restaurants in the area while on holiday, use one of the many apps that offer reviews of dining and drinking establishments around the world. If you have internet connection, you can quickly pull up the website of local restaurants and view their menus and prices before entering.

5. To Translate or Learn About Culture: If you happen to be visiting a country where you do not speak the native language, having the ability to translate can be very helpful. Download a vocabulary app to your iPad or even a foreign language dictionary so that you can quickly and easily translate words. Before your trip be sure to download a book on local culture to read in your spare time.

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As we are nearing the iPad 3’s release date, more good news keeps flowing for Apple and particularly for its shareholders. Apple’s 2012 Q1 earnings have beaten everybody’s expectations. Apple reported the largest ever quarterly revenue in its history. Mac sales are up by 26 percent year-on-year. Non-Apple PC sales were down by 9.2 percent in U.S over the same period. Thus as we predicted earlier, Apple exceeded Hewlett Packard’s sales and became World’s Number 1 PC Vendor. The numbers are staggering – iPad sales are 111 percent up over the previous year and reached 15.43 million in the quarter. 37.04 million iPhones were sold which is 128 percent increase year-on-year.

According to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, iPhone 4S demand was so huge that it was short of supply throughout the quarter. When questioned about tablet competition referring to Kindle Fire, Cook exuded confidence in the ecosystem of the iPad and iPad apps. He made no bones about his feeling towards devices like eReaders. Cook feels these are single-feature devices and people will not settle for them. He also believes that in future tablets will surpass PC’s in numbers.

Apple is now sitting with a pile of cash on hand. It is having a record $98 billion and many analysts were curious to know about Apple’s plans for deploying this cash. Analysts believe that Apple is going to announce some deals soon on smart television and in the content area. But in the meanwhile the quarter results have reaffirmed that iPad rules the roost in the tablet market and Kindle Fire is far away from making any dent on iPad. Do you think that iPad 3’s release might just settle the question once for all?

As per research firm Canalys, Apple is all set to dethrone Hewlett-Packard from the position of world’s top PC vendor. This is not surprising considering the indecisiveness from Hewlett-Packard regarding their Personal Systems Group (PSG), lack of direction and their TouchPad fiasco. As per Canalys, Apple might overtake HP before the second half of 2012. Apple’s iPad had revolutionized the PC industry and changed the rules of the game. Taking these changes into account, Canalys justly classifies iPad under personal computer. Thanks to iPad’s courtesy, Apple already zoomed into second place in the PC market in Q3 of 2011. And the stage is all set for iPad 3 to help Apple surpass HP’s market share.

In our previous post we mentioned about the Gartner survey, according to which Apple will totally dominate the tablet market consistently for the next 3 years. Digitimes is talking about some PC vendors completely leaving the tablet space. Owing to lack of proper ecosystem and linkages with content these PC vendors are unable to compete against the Apple’s and Amazon’s of the new PC era. Android’s release of Ice Cream Sandwich might be a hope for tier 1 manufacturers, but the release’s timing and upgrade timescales will not be of much help as per Canalys. Savvy consumers might put off their purchases until the release of newest Android version.

As per estimates from Canalys, full-year 2011 worldwide PC shipments will reach 415 million. This is an increase of 15% year-on-year. No prizes for guessing that a large part of this is due to ipad sales. Apple’s share of PC market rose from 9% to 15% within just four quarters.Total pad shipments are expected to reach 59 million units by the end of 2011, with Q4 volumes predicted to exceed 22 million. We need to see the impact of devices like Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet on iPad’s dominance. Do you think HP must revive their TouchPad or come up with a new tablet to get a foothold in tablet space to counter Apple? But Content is the King and the ultimate differentiator!

Steve Jobs was a showman as well as a genius innovator, as witnessed by his dramatic recent resignation as CEO of Apple.  He injected this sense of showmanship into the introduction of each of Apple’s new products, and the iPad2 was no exception. It just added a new note of competition to the already raging tablet war.

Who are the combatants in the tablet war? The main contenders against the Goliath, Apple, are Motorola with their Xoom tablet and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.

It is difficult for competitors to compete with Apple, both in terms of drama and the superb features of their products.  The iPad2 did not disappoint, with its thinner and lighter frame and cool new features.  But the competition is up and running, and here are some of the features that are heating up the war.

•   Thin is in. The iPad2 is only .34 inches thick and weighs in at 1.3 pounds. The Xoom is and 1.6 pounds, while the Galaxy Tab is .4 inches and 1.2 pounds.  It’s hard to imagine that lugging around an extra ounce or two will be a deciding factor at this point.

• Oh say, can you see.  The iPad2 has 9.7-inch display, Motorola Xoom has 10.1-inch and Samsung Galaxy Tab comes with 10.1-inch display. All small enough to be convenient, but large enough to be easy to read. Not much difference here, so let’s have a look at the technical features of all of these tablets.

• Make a resolution.  Apple iPad2 has the resolution of 1024×768, Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab are closer to a laptop with 1280 x 800 each. The Androids definitely win here.

• Capacity. The Apple iPad 2 should be the fastest, since it comes with 1GHz dual-core A5 processor and 32GB storage. Samsung Galaxy Tab has 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor and a choce of 16GB or 32 GB storage and the Xoom has a Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor with 32 GB storage.

Thanks for the Memory

Neither the iPad 2 nor the Galaxy come with expandable memory.  On the other hand, Motorola Xoom offers 32GB micro SD expandable memory. If you have a lot of data to store, Motorola Xoom may be the only answer.

Yes, the war is heating up, and new fighters will be arriving; this may really only be a battle in a greater war.

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Connected devices, a term used to represent tablets and other web-enabled devices like gaming consoles are gaining percentage of U.S web traffic. As per a recent ‘comScore’ report, 6.8% of total U.S Web traffic is coming from these ‘connected devices’. Of this non-computer traffic, two-thirds came from mobiles, driven largely by smart phones. The second largest driver of non-computer traffic was from the tablet category, contributing nearly 2 percent of whole U.S web traffic. Tablet contribution to U.S web traffic is increasing by 20-30% over the last 4 months. Apple’s iPad is completely dominating the tablet category by contributing 97.2 % of all tablet traffic in U.S as on August 2011. An impressive fact is that iPads now account for a higher share of internet traffic than iPhones.

Some other outcomes of the report to be noted are the traits of these iPad consumers and their consumption habits. Nearly half of the tablet owners made a purchase on their tablet and looked up for product or pricing information and read customer reviews. 3 out of 5 users consumed news on their iPads and 25% of them are doing on a nearly daily-basis. Two-thirds of tablet users played a game on their device. As per this report, even though Android occupies a larger share of smart phone market, it lags behind the Apple iOS audience in contribution to Web traffic. iOS users are larger consumers of the web content and it seems like it is a long way for other tablet competitors to eat into Apple’s share. As tablet penetration increases and they become more accessible, it has implications for publishers and advertisers too. They need to adopt and optimize their products for tablet presentation to reach an incremental audience.

You can download the full comScore report here.

Steve Jobs died this week, but his influence on technology and society will help to shape the coming century. His visionary welding of technology and design revolutionised the way we view them. Not only was he one of the greatest thinkers of our times he was also possibly it’s most successful business man. At the time of his death Apple was the most valuable company in the world.

It is difficult to summarise just how Steve jobs changed the world because his impact has been felt in so many areas. The introduction of the iPod and iTunes revolutionised not only the way music is delivered, but the entire music industry itself. The iPod meant for the first time the owner could take their entire music library with them where ever they went. It was iTunes that helped to kill off the already dying music megastores and forever changed the way people gather and distribute music. The music industry was already in trouble before Steve Jobs influence was felt. Piracy seemed a scourge with no answer. However iTunes produced the first viable model to monetise digital downloads. It also gave Jobs a huge amount of influence over the industry.

This was just one area in which Steve Jobs genius impacted the world. Another example was the introduction of the iPhone. Again this had a huge impact completely changing the telecommunications landscape. And this was not all, with the creation of his movie company Pixar he had a massive impact on the way modern films are made. Three major industries film, telecommunications and the music industry would never be the same again after Steve Jobs entered them.

Steve Jobs impact though is probably most acutely observed in the melding of design and technology. Steve Jobs was the first person to realise that aesthetics of personal technology was just as important as its functionality. Prior to him engineers held sway who had little interest in creating technology that was actually nice to look at. Steve Jobs changed all that and the impact was massive. Because iPhones, iPads and iMac are highly desirable based on their aesthetics people couldn’t get enough of them. Steve Jobs made it cool to like technology. No longer was it the sole domain of nerds now technology was for everyone. This gave apple a huge advantage over its competitors. People buy Apple products simply because they are made by Apple. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say the buy Apple products because they are made by Steve Jobs. His influence on apples products can be seen in every element of the design.

Steve Jobs was also a great business man. With some business leaders it is easy to say “He was lucky.” Or “He was there at the right time” But with Steve Jobs these throw away statements are not simple to declare. He was thrown out of the company he founded only to return to the company in 1997. The stock price tells the entire story. When he returned to the company the stock price was about $5 by the time of his death it was $375, and Steve Jobs had created the most valuable company in the world.

Steve Jobs influence on the world will be felt for many more years to come. While he maybe gone, his presence fundamentally changed the world we know.

RIP

Holding a press event in October tells us that this is Apple’s last even for 2011. And since all the talk circled around the iPhone, it’s not rocket science to guess that there’s no chance in hell consumers will be able to but an iPad 3 off store shelves this holiday season. However, rumors still can play on the chance that Apple would release a modified iPad 2, albeit shinier and prettier. Whether it would sport a spec boost or just a shiny case, the event is still short of something as big as the iPad 3. There are a lot of reasons why Apple would opt to delay the release of the much-awaited next gen iPad.

First, the iPad2 still outsells the competition. While Android tablets seem to be competing for the same minority marketshare, the HP TouchPad sold so bad that it was canceled. Meanwhile, Amazon is about to launch a tablet which doesn’t even plan to compete with the iPad. In other words, there is no reason for Apple to hurry releasing an improvement to something that sells, and sells very well. Many have speculated that because the iPad 2 was no more than a mere revision, Apple may have been secretly working of a new and revolutionary iPad design that is sure to awe even the Apple skeptics. They think that with more than a year being kept secret, the redesign should surely be ready by now. But just like all assumptions, the frequency it is talked about will not turn it into fact. Apple’s concern is the holiday shoppers looking forward to buy whether the existing iPad2 or the coming iPad3. The fear that they might buy something that would immediately be replaced by a newer model, the very exact scenario that happened with the iPad. But Apple can avoid this dilemma with an improved iPad2 to serve as a buffer or an intermediate iPad. This could be a transitional iPad from iPad2 to the iPad3. This is what Apple may exactly end up doing, although quietly. Whatever happens, you shouldn’t expect to see the iPad 3 before the year ends.

Sprint is now launching its own iPad 2. Apple’s new iPhone partner seems to share the frustration of many consumers patiently waiting for the anticipated release of iPad 3 with the iPhone 5. If the report from CNET were true, then the iPhone 5 would make its debut without the iPad 3. Apple traditionally lets a whole year pass before introducing new mobile tech, but there are some reasons why people believe it would just be seven months for the iPad2.

Verizon was selling in advance the non-3G iPad. This report claims that Sprint has been selling its own iPad 2 with built-in Sprint mobile networking. This is sure to disappoint many consumers because it’s still not an iPad 3. The iPad3 has been anticipated to be releases this year with the iPhone 5. Since the iPad 2 turned to be just a mere spec bump with some new features and a thinner casing, many people predicted that Apple is bound to release the real iPad 2. After all, Apple has surely been working on this since the first quarter of 2010.

The only way Apple could find some middle ground is by juicing up the iPad 2 into some sort of an “iPad 2S” model. Better specs should definitely include better battery life and more noise reduction. Apple could work something through while people are pre-occupied with iPhone 5 and the news of its release by the end of this year. This could somehow mitigate the tiring question of when people can see the iPad 3. This buzz among consumers is sure to escalate during the holiday season. For all we know, Sprint’s iPad 2 could in fact be a Sprint iPad 2S. Verizon and AT&T could also be getting their own models of this iPad 2S. What it would be ultimately called is not yet known; the term iPad 2S is just something wishful customers envisioned it would be named. Regarding the new iPhone 5 or iPad, Apple has again kept things to itself.

I still remember when psychiatrists and other health professionals preferred the notebook to a tablet PC . Especially when talking with clients, jotting using a tablet pen and tablet PC is better, and less distracting, then typing away at a notebook. That is why it is no wonder that doctors, nurses and other medical professionals quickly fell in love with the iPad. Lugging along something not much different from a clipboard is a step better than tagging along a notebook. The information it can store and the ease of use quickly trumps any other portable device.

2009 saw the enactment into law of HITECH or the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. This required hospitals, under pain of penalty, to invest heavily in secure EHR systems. With this new law, doctors were forced to reconsider how they kept records. Clipboards were becoming obsolete. Still, printing out information sheets is practiced. But this has a large window for abuse and leakage of patient confidentiality. The answer to maintain access to information yet keep confidentiality came in the form of the iPad.

Of all the useful applications out there, one notable is the DrChrono app. Originally released last year, this application deals with health records electronically. Even though the free version works great, medical facilities should seriously consider availing of the more advanced paid version.

It appears that the iPad has now made its way to the list of helpful tools for a medical professional. Technology is one of the ways that the healthcare industry can offer better services at less cost. Not only will the use of the iPad meet the requirements of HITECH, it would also make doctors and patients more confident, more comfortable and more efficient in their dealings.