Are iPads a flash in the iPan?

Well, that was predictable - no sooner does Apple announce an iPad than a plethora of others break out of the long grass - Forbes:

Asus is about to roll out its own iPad rivals. In an interview with Forbes, Shih revealed that Asus is planning to release "at least two" tablet PCs in the coming months. The Computex trade show in June is a good bet for the debut. Asus has long used the Taipei conference to unveil significant new products, including its original Eee PC netbook in 2007.

I doubt they will be the only ones.

There are 2 main strategic questions for the iPad, firstly Economic:

(i) Does Apple's end to end proprietary supply chain game that has served it so well for iPod and iPhone work here - ie the iPad is closer to a Web device so can access far more open content and services, so clones get a lot more content from the get go.

(ii) Does it capture a market big enough to justify its existence at a mass market price - the Fanboi's will buy, but will this jump the chasm - plenty of "good enoughs" surround it - netbooks, e-Readers, smartphones.

Secondly, it may well be let down on comparative ergonomics, never mind economics. I was kicking this around yesterday with a friend from the BBC who asked some good questions:

- how do you actually use one? You can't type on it like a laptop, you can't hold it in one hand like a smartphone, and holding it all the time will be fatguing

- its not light like a smartphone, but hasn't got the ooomph of a laptop or even a netbook. The standard behaviour today is that the smartphone handles email, web and social media monitoring but you carry a small laptop for the heavy lifting, You can't drop the laptop (yet), nor the smartphone (its a phone too remember), so will Joe or Joanne Average you really lug an expensive 3rd piece of kit around?

Moore's Law solves all these things, but over time - which implies that devices coming in a year, 2 years later may be much better and make it hard for the first mover to gain advantage.

If it were anyone else but Apple I'd say the fast followers will win in a 3 year horizon, but this is the one consumer gadget company that can possibly carry it off.

Update - typical of the hype spiel is this post from Walt Mossberg. First, the standard "iPad is a laptop Killer" schtick from the fanboi glossies:

For the past week or so, I have been testing a sleek, light, silver-and-black tablet computer called an iPad. After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.

Fainting with damning praise Give him his due, though - he also sees some of the issues we do too:

But first, it will have to prove that it really can replace the laptop or netbook for enough common tasks, enough of the time, to make it a viable alternative. And that may not be easy, because previous tablet computers have failed to catch on in the mass market, and the iPad lacks some of the features—such as a physical keyboard, a Webcam, USB ports and multitasking—that most laptop or netbook users have come to expect.

If people see the iPad mainly as an extra device to carry around, it will likely have limited appeal. If, however, they see it as a way to replace heavier, bulkier computers much of the time—for Web surfing, email, social-networking, video- and photo-viewing, gaming, music and even some light content creation—it could be a game changer the way Apple’s iPhone has been.

As discussed above, I think this is a bigger "if" than Walt (and the rest of the Breathless Club) do in the short term.