iPad 2, which features two cameras and is thinner and faster than its predecessor, shown off by Apple boss Steve Jobs
Apple's Steve Jobs has made a surprise appearance to show off the company's updated version of its iPad tablet computer, and to knock copycats which he said had not yet caught up with the company's original version released last year.
The newer iPad, which adds a front camera for video calls and a camera on the back for taking pictures, is thinner and faster than its predecessor. It is also available for the first time in white.
It will retail for the same price when it becomes available from 11 March in the US and from 25 March in the UK and other countries.
Though he looked frail and thin, the presence of Jobs, 56, instantly boosted the company's stock price by $3 (�1.83), a 1% rise, and he was given a standing ovation from the audience of industry figures and executives in the Yerba Buena centre in San Francisco.
In January, Jobs took indefinite medical leave from working at the company he co-founded ? believed to be due to a recurrence of the cancer first diagnosed in 2004. He was, however, animated as he said: "We've been working on this product for a while, and I didn't want to miss it. Thank you for having me."
Dismissing rivals' attempts at producing alternatives to the iPad as high-priced and low-selling, with few applications available for them, he also had news that underlined Apple's increasingly aggressive moves into the ebook market.
Jobs said that the publisher Random House is joining the iBooks scheme for the iPad, bringing 17,000 publications, and that there had been 100m ebooks downloaded in the past year.
Separately, he pointed to Apple's increasing grip on the online content market, noting that the iTunes Store, through which books, music, films and apps are sold, now has 200m accounts worldwide ? making it the biggest credit card account holder on the web.
Meanwhile, he said, Apple has now sold 100m iPhones, and developers have earned $2bn from selling apps on Apple's online store.
"We've sold 15m iPads in nine months, that's more than every tablet PC [from Microsoft] ever sold," he said. "We got over 90% market share. Our competitors were flummoxed."
Industry reports from Apple suppliers suggest that the company hopes to ship around 40m of the devices this year.
However, analysts are still predicting that products based around Google's free Android operating system will eventually overhaul Apple.
Adam Leach of the research company Ovum said: "Devices based on Google's platforms will only overtake those based on Apple's platform by 2015, when we forecast 36% and 35% market shares respectively of a total market with shipments of approximately 150m units in 2015. This compares with Ovum's estimate of 10% for Google and 90% for Apple at the end of 2010."
Microsoft has still failed to make any impact on the fast-growing market, which is beginning to show signs of eating into its traditional stronghold of PCs, from which it derives most of its revenue. In the US, PC sales have begun to flatten, partly because people are buying tablets instead, analysts say.
Microsoft might not have a response to Apple's and Google's platforms before 2012, when it is expected to release a new version of Windows designed for tablets.
Meanwhile other companies including BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and Hewlett-Packard have announced that they will release tablets based on their own software later this year.
The new iPad will continue to solidify Apple's stranglehold on the tablet market according to Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. iPad 2 will claim 80% of the US tablet market this year according to Forrester's projections. Of the more than 24m tablets that will be sold to US consumers in 2011, at least 20m will be iPads.
Shiny new Apples
Thinner, lighter, faster ? Apple has added a touch of Air to the second version of the iPad. The front and rear-facing cameras, the biggest omission from iPad 1, have nowarrived, though the iPad is an unwieldy camera. A gyroscope catches up with iPod Touch and iPhone, and the new A5 processor means better screen performance and faster graphics. Obsessives will lust after the trophy-white iPad ? whose promised cousin the white iPhone 4 never appeared ? while a pleasant surprise was the fingerprint-removing smart case. But Steve Jobs's surprise appearance, which instantly upped Apple's share price by 1%, may have helped boost an underwhelming launch, which largely consisted of bragging about the iPad's dominance and introducing features that were always notably absent from the first iPad. Jemima Kiss
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/02/ipad-apple
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