Apple Debuts the iPad Tablet

Apple honcho Steve Jobs hit the stage Wednesday and took the wraps off his newest cutting-edge gizmo – the iPad.

It’s a touchscreen tablet computer that weighs 1.5 pounds. A half-inch thin, it has 9.7-inch screen and is a cross between a laptop and a smartphone.

Jobs called it “awesome.”

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product,” Jobs said at a theater in San Francisco, where he hawked the iPad with a showman’s flair. “All of us use laptops and smartphones now.”

It’s time, he said, for “a third category of device.”

Apple customers will be able to use the iPad to watch videos, surf the Web, download music, play games and read electronic books, Jobs said.
“It’s phenomenal to see a whole web page right in front of you,” he said. “Way better than a laptop, way better than an iPhone.”

And with 10 hours of battery life, Jobs said, “I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch videos the whole way on one charge. It’s pretty nice.”

Jobs, 54, who returned to helm of Apple after undergoing a liver transplant, was clearly enamored with his newest creation.

“Isn’t that cool?” he said, a big grin creasing his face. The iPad is “so much more intimate than a laptop, so much more capable than a smartphone.”

Jobs also announced the launch of an online bookstore called “iBooks,” which will be similar to the popular iTunes music store.

He also showed his rapt audience a slide of a competitor’s relatively new device which he hopes to make defunct – Amazon’s Kindle.

“We’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further,” he said.

Apple is going all out for the iPad. It’s the company’s biggest product launch since the iPhone three years ago.

The big question for Jobs and Apple is whether consumers will be willing to shell out more dough for yet another Internet-connected device, on top of the TVs, computers and smart phones they already have.

The 16-GB iPad will sell for $499, 32-GB model for $599, and the 64-GB model for $699. Prices shoot up $130 if the consumer wants a 3G model. At those prices, Apple could have a hit on its hands, some experts said.

“The first year for iPhone and iPod achieved 6 million units in sales – we think the tablet will achieve the same level of sales the first year of launch,” Ashok Kumar, managing director at Northeast Securities Inc., told Bloomberg television.

Skeptics, however, say tablet-sized computers are nothing new – and have not caught on with the public.