As you wander through the blogosphere, the pre-launch hype about the ipad is astonishing.
There are many reviews, but as very few have seen one, they are all just speculation, or Apple insiders doing their bit towards the marketing blitzkrieg.
Now it is launched, and there are reports of 700,000 being sold in the first 24 hours, perhaps there may be some realism emerging, but most of those early buyers will see nothing but the “greatness” they ascribe to the Apple brand, the shortcomings will not be noticed.
Those of us who build brands are in awe of the branding skills of Apple, but should remember their overnight branding success came after 30 years, and included some pretty ordinary stuff amongst the brilliance. Now their innovation machine is almost as well oiled as their marketing machine, but how are they going to hype away the advantage Kindle holds over access to books and magazines, or will they just accept that ipad will need to connect to Amazon to be competitive, and move on.
I suspect not, rather the other functionality will be the focus of attention, and shortcomings will be managed away.
