Forced to respond to increasing competition on various fronts, Apple Inc. made a splash by introducing the iPad 2, iOS 4.3 and its partnership with Random House Inc. for ebook distribution.

While there are compelling Android-based tablets, as well as Research In Motion?s BlackBerrry PlayBook and Hewlett-Packard?s webOS-based TouchPad, in terms of market share the iPad 2 should remain safely ahead of the competition for quite some time. Marketers are expecting a vast array of new opportunities in terms of marketing and advertising via the new, souped-up device.

?We help to create different types of mobile campaigns around tablet experiences?different experiences for mobile marketing and advertising campaigns and tablet campaigns,? said Alex Moukas, CEO of Velti, Palo Alto, CA. ?Consumers are using smartphones differently than they are using tablets.

?One of our major auto clients gave us feedback that it believes tablets as different from mobile as mobile is from the PC Web, as people consume content differently,? he said. ?The tablet is more lean-back than lean-forward.

?People are still using the tablet as a big mobile device or a small PC, but we see it as a completely different platform?we are helping clients form a tablet strategy that is completely different from their mobile strategy.?

Brands want to build rich-media ads once and launch it multiple times across platforms, per Velti.

?Our customer base doesn?t want to build five different types of ads for all of the platforms out there?they want to write once and push it out everyone,? Mr. Moukas said. ?That includes the iPad, as well as Android-based tablets and eventually the BlackBerry PlayBook and HP TouchPad as well.?

Upgrading the iPad and iOS
The iPad 2 features a new design that is 33 percent thinner and up to 15 percent lighter than the original iPad, while maintaining the same 9.7-inch LED-backlit LCD screen. It will be available in Wi-Fi-only and 3G-plus-Wi-Fi versions on both AT&T and Verizon Wireless, providing additional reach for advertisers and publishers.

The new version of Apple?s tablet will include two cameras, a front-facing VGA camera for FaceTime and Photo Booth, and a rear-facing camera that captures HD video, bringing the FaceTime feature to iPad users for the first time.

The iPad 2 will come with iOS 4.3, the latest version of Apple?s mobile operating system, with new features including faster Safari mobile browsing performance, iTunes Home Sharing and Personal Hotspot to share an iPhone 4 cellular data connection over Wi-Fi.

?The iPad 2 is obviously raising the bar for all of the other tablets that are out there," said David Eads, head of product marketing at Kony Solutions, San Francisco. ?At Mobile World Congress, I didn?t see anything out there in the tablet space that was really new and different from what we?ve seen with the iPad.

?Now Apple is adding another set of features and functionality to benefit consumers, so competitors must catch up,? he said. ?I don?t think they can come up with anything game-changing, because everyone else is so far behind iPad 2.

?It is really clear to me that this device is all about video content, ebook content, and it is a dream for consumers to use to consume media?publishers and media companies must take their content, make it work really well on the iPad and figure out how to monetize it.?

Various ways to monetize content
Apple has sold more than 17 million iPads since the tablet's launch last year.

The iPad 2 will run almost all of the 350,000-plus applications available in the App Store, and there are more than 65,000 native iPad apps available.

The iBooks app for iPad includes Apple?s iBookstore, letting consumers browse, buy and read books on a mobile device.

Random House, which claims to be the largest trade book publisher nationwide, has made its full catalog of 17,000 ebooks available on Apple?s iBookstore, including bestsellers by Stieg Larsson, John Grisham, Dan Brown, Danielle Steel, Laura Hillenbrand, Cormac McCarthy and Lee Child.

With the addition of Random House, the iBookstore now offers ebooks from all six major trade publishers and thousands of independent publishers.

In addition to paid content, monetization tactics based on free, ad-supported content are also flourishing on the iPad.

?Apple has sold more than 17 million iPads in its first year, and their success has spurred an entirely new product category to take hold,? said Eric Litman, chairman/CEO of Medialets, New York.

?The second generation of the device will undoubtedly help to push the market faster and drive greater consumer adoption, which ultimately creates more scale for advertisers seeking to take advantage of the medium,? he said.

?And with engagement rates of 10 percent and higher on tablet-based rich-media ads, that scale plus the creative flexibility modern tablets provide combine to deliver an extremely attractive marketing vehicle.?

Market leader
The new iPad will continue to solidify Apple?s stranglehold on the tablet market, according to a blog post by Sarah Rotman Epps, senior analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, MA.

The iPad 2 will claim 80 percent of the U.S. tablet market this year, according to Forrester?s projections.

Of the more than 24 million tablets that will be sold to U.S. consumers in 2011, at least 20 million will be iPads.

Ms. Epps said that the competing products she had seen announced so far from Motorola, RIM and Hewlett-Packard, while impressive, have fatally flawed price and distribution strategies.

For now, Apple still defines the tablet market, with a product consumers will desire at a price that is hard to beat, per Forrester.

The iPod and iPhone had a phenomenal rate of growth, but they have been eclipsed in the rate of adoption by the iPad.

?It is incredible that no one saw it coming ? even the most aggressive Apple analyst was off by a factor of two times,? said Tarun Nimmagadda, chief operating officer of Mutual Mobile, Austin, TX. ?This represents a phenomenal misunderstanding of the impact that the iPad would have on people?s lives and the way business is done.

?Consumers clearly love the iPad for its ability to transform mundane digital tasks into experiences,? he said. ?But enterprises love the iPad?s ability to bring the benefits of computing to places it has never been ? in the field.?

Rudimentary pre-iPad stylus-based tablet computing has not delivered a sufficient quality experience to displace pen and paper in key business processes such as auditing, surveys and forms, per Mutual Mobile.

With iPad-services such as Firehouse, firefighters are able to conduct fire inspections from their iPad.

With iPad-services such as PrimeSuite from Greenway Medical, healthcare practitioners are able to complete medical checklists with their iPad.

?Examples like these show ways that the iPad has begun to fundamentally disrupt and transform the way that enterprises do business,? Mr. Nimmagadda said. ?The iPad 2 brings a camera, faster hardware in a thinner and lighter form-factor. Furthermore, it brings new features to simplify the deployment of iPads in the enterprise.

?Productivity software and the enterprise constituted a significant portion of the second wave of iPhone adoption and the same wave of adoption is imminent with the iPad 2,? he said. ?New hardware and software will allow video conferencing and collaboration possibilities.

?A critical mass of iPads in a company will allow companies to create applications for internal workflows that are distributed to their employees via enterprise app catalogs instead of via the enterprise App Store.?

Please click here to view Apple's demo video for the iPad 2.

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Marketer