Digital interactivity has moved to the centre of marketing strategy. The launch of the iPad by Apple has moved it noticeably.
I have not seen one, just read the reviews, and when you sift through the hyperbole, it seems that the iPad has a pretty good chance of changing the way a large section of the market behaves. For communication centric uses, the iPad will possibly be a revelation, but to applications that require number crunching, it will not replace a computer. Now the market will segment by what sorts of applications you require, not just the size, and performance characteristics, and PC Vs Mac segmentation that has prevailed.
The other segmenting drive is the coming battle in “e-book” publishing, which will be facinating to watch. Amazons Kindle got the ball rolling, but the momentum will be built by the iPad when they get the iBook store running properly, which should not be long. It took Apple several years to get the iTunes store running, and it created a tsunami in the music world, it may be a bit harder in books because they are simply harder to digitise, but the lessons from launching iTunes will not be lost, and the current book publishing business model is clearly about to be broken apart.
