The Tablet Takeover

They are the patrons of a new tool that is swiftly muscling in on the laptops turf,changing the way we consume content,experience entertainment and interact with our devices. The tablet,called the tablet PC,back when the personal computer was still cool,is taking over the world,one app at a time. And if the deluge of these next-generation devices unveiled early this year at the international Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is anything to go by,this is happening at a pace characteristic of truly transformative technology. According to Gartner,an information technology research company,2011 will see tablet sales of 54.8 million units,up from 19.5 million in 2010,and will surpass 208 million units in 2014. Thats transformative for you.

Swipe. Slide. Tap. Pinch. Zoom in. Drag. Scribble. Doodle. Tablet operating systems,with their sublime touch screens and intuitive interface,are ringing in a glorious era of gesture in everyday computing. The world is in the throes of an i-epidemic and Apple Inc. fans in India,who can finally stop asking their friends in the US to bring back an iPad,are an excited lot. In Bangalore,V Ravichandar,chairman,Feedback Consulting,a business consultancy,is an implacable ibeliever. My iPad is an extension of me, he says. The tablet that launched a million sighs the world over has become an intrinsic part of his professional and personal life in just four months and cut his laptop usage by 80 per cent. The iPad works, he pronounces. As long as you are clear about where it fits in. For Ravichandar who has convinced his top management to swap their laptops for iPads,at least in the conference roomits a productivity and consumption device. Its easy to carry around,has no start-up time and a convenient screen size,so I end up replying to most of my email on it. Yes,its not great for composing a long email,but its convenient for reading. The Economist,for instance,reads better on the iPad than in print,and now I can read it on Friday rather than wait for it to be delivered to my doorstep on Sunday. The iPad subscription is cheaper,too, he says.

Apples new subscription policy though it involves ceding a rather large share of the revenue to the company has opened doors for newspapers and magazines to offer subscriptions instead of the pay-per-issue regime. This could well be a game-changer. Many of us already get our news online. Tablets,being ultra-portable,battery-efficient,always-connected and highly biased towards information consumption,are efficient e-readers,without being just that. Ankit Gupta,one of the two Indian students at Stanford Design School who designed Pulse,a revolutionary visual news app for the iPhone and the iPad,was quick to realise that. We had a lot of personal frustration with our news reading experience. Akshay Kothari,my partner,used to switch from one tab to another on his browser to get his daily news. I had set up my Google Reader account,which used to give me hundreds of articles to read every day in a very text-heavy interface. We decided to build a better experience where you can aggregate all your favourite sources in one application and also have a more visually pleasing and efficient way to consume this information, he says. Almost as soon as it was launched,Pulse became the No. 1 news app on iTunes and was highlighted by Steve Jobs at a developers conference.

Other apps like Instapaper,which lends you the freedom of saving webpages for chewing the cud at leisure,have exploited the growing demand for on-the-go content. Take Bollywood actor Gul Panag,who owns an iPad as well as a Samsung Galaxy Tab. Panag has a newfound predilection for reading news and novels on the iPad and has stopped subscribing to physical newspaper editions. This is the future of all our reading,and its not far,says Shyamal Mehta,co-founder of TechJini,a Bangalore-based company that makes iPhone,iPad and Android apps. TechJini has developed a books app featuring curated content,including Indian comics,and is working on improving the experience of reading on a tablet by delivering personalised content and smooth navigation.

The tablet is many things to many people. To put it differently,you are what your tablet does. For filmmaker Karan Johar,who uses a Galaxy Tab on his popular TV show,Koffee with Karan, the compactness and the efficiency of the tablet is definitely its USP. It is slick,sleek and smart, says Johar. Vriti Malik,a 23-year-old from Delhi,uses her iPad to browse fashionandyou.com and the highheelconfidential blog,update her Facebook and Twitter,and jot down ideas as they come. Just what youd expect from a young,clued-in content writer. For Malik,the tablet is a personalised device that inspires her to think. Thanks to the apps Ive installed on it,it feels like it has been made just for me and its a welcome change from bulky laptops and the BlackBerry,which reminds you of work constantly, she says.

In an instantaneous world,the tablet is a constant companion and a trusted associate. Kalyan Varma,a wildlife photographer who likes to carry his portfolio of 2,000 of his best images,swears by his iPad. Last month,I was doing a story on tiger conservation with a journalist from the Smithsonian magazine. We had spent a few days on the field,but hadnt managed to get any tiger shots. While we were waiting in a watch tower for the tiger to show up,I showed him photographs of tigers on my iPad which I had shot earlier. He liked them,and we decided to run the story with my photographs. This could never have happened if I had had to lug around my laptop, he says. From editing his photos to playing videos on the go,Varma cannot imagine life without the iPad. Impressed by its easy interface,Varma also bought one for his computer-illiterate mother,who has effortlessly mastered it and now uses it to check email and Skype with her cousins. It has changed the way we think about computers, Varma says.

The iPads stunning graphics and neat home screen have already taken the gourmet restaurant circuit by storm. In Mumbai,as early as November last year,Koh,a signature Thai restaurant at the InterContinental,Marine Drive,introduced iPad menus and other restaurants followed suit. FuBetter Than Chinese,a restaurant in the bustling south Delhi market,is planning to put a tablet on every table by the end of March so that customers can place orders to the kitchen directly. The menu will come with a list of ingredients that will help you choose better, says Gaurav Rekhi,an ex-banker and partner in the restaurant. The promise of the tablet is huge in the restaurant business. You can put up data on how often a dish has been ordered in a day straight on a Facebook page for feedback. And loyal customers can have log-ins where they add their preferences, says Rekhi,who has placed orders for the Android tablets from China and Taiwan,but wants to have customised software designed for them.

If you thought food at your fingertips was a needless excess,Nishant Wadhwa,proprietor of Mosaic Furniture in Ghaziabad,UP,will convince you otherwise. When a customer asks to be shown model sofas,he simply whips out his iPad and asks her to gently flip her finger across the screen to browse the images on the tablet. I use the iPad purely as a catalogue and have over 2,000 images of furniture and several videos stored on it, Wadhwa says,adding that the tablet has boosted his sales. Customers hang on for a longer time because they are amused by the device and enjoy the smooth browsing experience,he says.

Beyond the novelty of form,is there a case for enterprise use of tablets? The use of thousands of iPads by the likes of General Electric and Mercedes Benz in their offices suggests big business isn’t shying away from the $500-plus convenience device. What could bring change to small businesses in India,however,are the Chinese-manufactured tablets that are selling for as little as Rs 5,000. For Ashiq Ali,a silk fabric wholesaler in Chickpet,Bangalore,the tablet could well be his first and only computer. Ali says he has seen news channels review the Olive Pad,one of the first 3G tablets in India. I am waiting for a tablet that costs less than Rs 10,000 and meets all my needs it should be my phone as well as Internet and email device. Now,I go to a cyber cafe to check my email for orders every other day, says the 32-year-old.

While multi-device users are now testing the tablet waters,they are nowhere close to giving up their laptops. For them the tablet is an also-ran,after workhorse laptops and overloaded smartphones. Each device has its place, says Aditya Manchanda,seated in a red,low-floor bus to Electronic City in Bangalore. As the clock strikes eight,the software engineer is still wrapped up in his early-morning drowsiness. I have a sleep cycle alarm clock app that tells me if I had a sound nights sleep,but there is no app yet that can jolt me awake, he jokes,lightly tapping his favourite iPad application,Flipboard a social magazine that aggregates web links from ones social circle on Twitter,Facebook and other networking websites. Every day,the first thing I do once I get on the bus to work is access my email,then I work my way through half-a-dozen apps,including Angry Birds (an insanely popular slingshot game), says the 25-year-old who uses an iPhone for calls,Google Maps and instant Web look-ups,and a laptop for work and intensive gaming.

At the Indian Institute of Technology,Delhi,Preeti Ranjan Panda,professor at the Computer Science Department,says that while tablets have been around for a while,the new generation of faster,sleeker devices bodes well for education. I have been using a two-year-old HP tablet for classroom teaching for a while now. Its perfect for projecting presentations in front of a large class and it also offers the flexibility of scribbling on the screen as I talk, he says.

When the government announced a $35 educational tablet last year,the country,with its 100 million school children,went into a tizzy. A year later,there is a tired silence. Meanwhile,entrepreneurs are trying to capitalise on the demand for low-cost technological aids for education. One such venture,Noida-based iProf,is preparing to launch an e-learning tablet running Android 2.2 in April. Priced upwards of Rs 5,000,the Internet-enabled tablet comes with a learning management system that will allow students to subscribe to particular courses medicine,engineering,GRE,etc. We already have 25 Wi-Fi-enabled iStudy zones across the country where the student can connect to our network and download course material. We should have 120 by the year end, says Nitin Kaushik,COO,iProf. E-learning has so far been hampered by dependency on bulky computers and broadband. iProf seeks to bring mobility and convenience to e-learning, he says.

Of course,serious utilities aside,you could dock a tablet in your living room to flaunt when your chi-chi friends come over for tea. As it turns out,real estate players are now encouraging such vanity and even adding utility to home-bound tablets. Over the past few months,home automation systems with tablets providing the interface have gained popularity among high-end builders. Mumbais Lodha Group has an upcoming property in Kanjurmarg area,which comes with iPads that have inbuilt home automation apps. We have sold about 100 flats at Lodha Aurum Grande and buyers will be given iPads, says R Karthik,Chief Marketing Officer,Lodha Group. And in the furthest reaches of Gurgaons Golf Course Road in Sector 53,the Ireo group is selling about 790 properties,ranging from Rs 1 crore to Rs 3.3 crore,in the Skyon: Space age living series. All apartments in the series come with automation facilities through the iHomePad,a tablet Ireo engineers have developed. Everything in the apartment can be controlled remotely through the tablet: TV switches,gadgets and appliances,curtains,front door locks,air conditioners,and various degrees of lighting. I would divide the iHomePads uses into three categories: comfort,security and infrastructure, says an Ireo representative. Clearly,the tablet story has only just begun.

Apps you cant miss
iPad

1.Flipboard:
It’s a social media magazine. It brings together the links and photos shared by your friends on Facebook,Twitter Google Reader and Flickr. You can also share articles and pictures on Flipboard. Free.

2.Kindle:
This e-reader app lets you download books from the Kindle store. It comes with three free books and a dictionary look-up function. Bookmark pages,take notes and sync your last page read with this app. Free.

3.Instapaper:
Save interesting pages for reading later. This convenient bookmarking app,also a hit on the iPhone,is great for catching up on your reading on-the-go. More and more apps are now adding a ‘send to Instapaper’ button. Free.

4.Angry Birds HD:
If you’ve played this game on your iPhone,you will fall in love with it again on the iPad. Now you can launch birds in the air,destroy pigs and see the laws of physics in action in jaw-dropping high-def. The lite version is free.

5.Google Mobile:
Access other Google apps,try voice search,take a picture of an object to have Googles search engine recognise it,translate text,solve Sudoku puzzles,find location-based results. Google’s turbo pack. Free.
Android

1.Google Voice:
Google Voice gives users a number that can call other numbers and allows access to all voicemail and text messages over the web. When you make the call,only the Google Voice number shows up,keeping your mobile number private. Free.

2.Advanced Task Killer:
The Advanced Task Killer is a must to kill those unnecessary apps that drain the battery when you are not using them. Free.

3.Androidify:
It lets you customise the little green Android,maybe even make it look like yourself with short hair and some stubble. Free.

4.Barcode Scanner:
You can scan barcodes of products to look up prices and reviews and even the expiry date. Free.

5.Documents To Go:
The free version gives users a reader for Word and Excel files. The full version will let you edit files and play around with PowerPoint. Free/paid.

With inputs from Nandagopal Rajan,Debesh Banerjee,Dipti Nagpaul-Dsouza,Harneet Singh,Irena Akbar,Shruti Ravindran and Sharon Fernandes