CEO Reflections - The Rapid iPad Adoption

Hello everyone, we have had a busy last week, wrapping up the end of a very successful August! We continue to improve the product based on your suggestions and feedback.

What's on my mind this week is the wildly successful adoption of the iPad as a business tool. At first, my reaction to the iPad bordered on skepticism. How many screens could one person use? My television, my laptop, my iPhone and maybe some gaming console like a Wii or Xbox. Was there room for one more screen? Well, I humbly stand corrected.

The smartphones, the iPhone being the leader of pack, until now were used mostly as business content "consuming" tools rather than "creation" tools. This was mostly because of the limiting form factor. I, for one, would not be keen to open and edit a spreadsheet on my iPhone. However, the iPad has been a game changer. As we soon found out, our users want to do a lot more with their iPads than just access their files. They want to edit existing content and create new content. Moreover, they want to have almost all of the capabilities that we have in our normal laptop or desktop application.

We are pushing a new iPad app to the app store which has some nifty off-line access capabilities. Of course, we are adding the same capabilities and a few more to the iPhone app since iOS4 support on the iPhone enables better background processing. Soon after, we will be adding more file and folder management capabilities to both of the apps. I am watching with interest how iPad adoption will grow -- will it completely replace the laptop for mobile professionals? For sure, the market for netbooks will shrink. Also, we are watching for the first real Android tablet challenger to come out.

Being successful in the technology and startup industry means making your product useful across a range of different technologies, and staying on top of new technologies as much as possible. Thanks for reading my thoughts and please leave any of yours below! I'd love to hear your opinions about iPad use and any other new technologies. Have a wonderful day and I'll talk to you next week.