What Will We Do With a 12.9-Inch iPad?

By this time next month, the rumors about a new, larger iPhone will be put to rest. By next year, if those rumors hold true, we’ll also have the super-sized 12.9-inch iPad alongside the regular 9.7-inch model and the mini.

It’s a product I don’t fully understand, but there are scenarios in which a bigger iPad is truly better.

It's not the first time we're heard the giant iPad rumor, and it won't be the last, either. If you listen to analysts and supply-chain snoops, Apple is always building a 12- or 13-inch iPad, but have never delivered one. Apple soothsayers tend to hedge their bets by predicting delivery sometime next year.

I do believe Apple is working on something larger, but then again, the company has a history of testing all kinds of design variations. There’s no guarantee anything will ever make it to market.

“This time, it's different,” some industry-watchers will say. Most are pointing to the apparently calamitous dip in iPad sales.

Apple is a tablet leader, a brightly blinking beacon for the rest of the industry. This sales slide has set off a lot of hand-wringing and near panic for tablet market watchers. It does not matter that Apple is still selling well over 10 million iPads every single quarter. If Apple’s tablet sales trajectory is not pointing north, some observers think there’s doom ahead for all tablets.

But if you believe, as I do, that Apple’s product development decisions are not driven by temporary market fluctuations, then there must be another reason for the uber iPad.
Let's be more productive

There was a time when iPads and other tablets were marketed as consumption devices. Thin, lightweight and almost nothing but display, they were perfect for watching movies and TV shows, playing games, reading books, magazines and email and casually browsing the web.

You may have noticed how, in recent months, the tenor of Apple’s iPad ads have changed. It’s increasingly focusing on the productivity and creativity aspects of the iPad — driven largely, of course, by the apps running on it. In one new spot, for example, Detroit activist Jason Hall uses a collection of apps, including Prezi, a very visual and fairly easy-to-use presentation app, to express ideas, organize and motivate.

Earlier this year, Apple and Tim Cook wholeheartedly welcomed Microsoft Office for the iPad to the App Store. I suspect that enthusiasm was in large part because this is how

Apple wants people to see the iPad: as a do-it-all device.

The problem: When people really want to get things done, they still turn to laptop computers and their keyboards. That's not necessarily a problem for Apple, as it sells a very successful line of MacBooks, including the super-thin MacBook Air.

Apple may believe, however, that a larger tablet will attract more productivity workers to the platform. With its recent push into the enterprise, a 12.9-inch iPad could align well with the needs of large-scale business.

J.P. Gownder, VP and principal analyst for mobility and devices at Forrester Research, agrees. He said we need to stop looking at the tablet market as a whole and consider scenarios. Enterprise is one such scenario.

“The enterprise market is growing more rapidly than the consumer market,” Gownder said.

Does that growth align with interest? Certainly, there is something alluring about a truly big-screen tablet that’s still light enough to tote around the office without getting arm fatigue. Isn't that what the 13-inch MacBook Air is for, though? Its display is a tad larger than the rumored uber iPad and weighs just less than 3 pounds.

A 12.9-inch iPad might weigh considerably less, but it also lacks critical productivity features like a keyboard, built-in mouse, multiple USB ports and an SD card slot. Certainly no new iPad would add any of those.

Making a viable TV alternative

A larger iPad doesn’t automatically translate into greater productivity or success. At CES 2014, Samsung unveiled two 12-inch tablets, the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro and the Tab Pro.

I have never seen one of these devices in the wild. Creative Strategies president and longtime industry watcher Tim Bajarin called the pair “moderately successful," but noted that, as Android devices, they’re not particularly friendly to productivity. Nevertheless, Bajarin owns one and is pleased with it: "I take it all around the house and into the yard when I am watching a game or some type of video.”

I have trouble believing that anyone would buy a 12.9-inch iPad as a mini TV alternative. At home, most people are watching TV on their big screen HDTV, perhaps with a smartphone or tablet on their laps as a second screen. However, Forrester’s Gownder told me this scenario is not as unusual as I think.

“We have research that shows people do not take their consumer tablets outside the house,” he says.

That is, in part, because of the rise of the phablet.

Apple will almost surely join in the phablet trend next month — and as Gownder puts it, phablets are "sort of reshaping the future of the tablet market.” The rising popularity of 4.7- to 5.5-inch smartphones may be dampening enthusiasm for 7- to 8-inch tablets. The screen sizes are simply too close.

Gownder thinks consumers may prefer an iPad with a larger screen at home, a phablet for the road and a laptop or larger all-in-one for work.

Thinking outside the iPad box

Even in the home, there may be a place for the 12.9-inch iPad. But if Apple’s real goal is productivity, they have to do something more. Instead of shipping a 12.9-inch iPad in 2015, Apple should introduce its first hybrid, an Apple iPad that comes with a detachable keyboard.

This isn't a new idea.

Many longtime iPad users have, at one time or another, used a Bluetooth keyboard with their tablets. My Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard has a slot for the iPad mini; since the slot is closer to the mid-point of the accessory, it doesn’t make the iPad look like a laptop.

We already have a good model for the hybrid tablet strategy: Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3, a laptop in tablet’s clothing. It runs an X86 CPU and handles full-blown Windows 8.1 while the iPad will always be an iOS device that runs iOS apps (though Mac OSX and iOS grow more similar each year).

The Surface Pro 3 is most fully realized when paired with one of its ultra-slim keyboard covers, which should ideally not be sold separately. Just think what a game-changer it would be if Apple introduced a custom-made, snap-on keyboard cover at the same time as the iPad 12.9.

Forrester’s Gownder agreed that the 12.9-inch iPad would be most effective in the enterprise if paired with a “Surface Pro 3-type keyboard.” However, he also predicted that Apple would never make that keyboard, and would instead turn to its third-party partners to build and sell it for them. If Apple sells the hybrid I’m asking for, it runs the risk of cannibalizing its own MacBook Air 13-inch sales.

Giving the people what they want

if Cook ever walks on stage and shows how enterprises might use the 12.9-inch tablet with a keyboard — even if it's not an Apple-made keyboard — it will mark a momentous reversal of Apple policy.

The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs was adamant that laptops should never have a touchscreen. But if Apple encourages companies to build keyboards for a larger iPad, essentially creating Apple’s first hybrid device, it would "not fit into [Jobs’] vision of ‘the iPad is all things to all people,'" Gownder says.

He’s right. It will be another instance of Cook’s divergent vision driving the company forward.

On the other hand, it may also prove that the iPad can be all things to all people, provided it’s at the size they want and can readily accept a keyboard.

Posted by : Gizmeon