Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance in San Francisco on March 2 to unveil a new version of the hot-selling iPad that is thinner, lighter and features video cameras. "We've been working on this product quite awhile and I just didn't want to miss a great day," said Jobs, who appeared gaunt but energetic and was dressed in his trademark long-sleeve black turtleneck and blue jeans.
"We think 2011 is clearly going to be the Year of iPad 2," Jobs said. The iPad 2 features front- and rear-facing video cameras to enable video chat and is thinner than the previous version.
"The new iPad 2 is actually thinner than your iPhone 4," said Jobs. "It is dramatically thinner, not a little thinner, a third thinner." It weighs 1.3 pounds, down from 1.5 pounds, has the same 10-hour battery life as the previous model and will come in black and white versions.
"And we are going to be shipping white from day one," Jobs said in a joking reference to Apple's continuing inability to produce a promised white version of the iPhone 4.
Jobs said the iPad 2 will sell for the same $499-$829 price as the previous model. It will ship in the United States on March 11 and on March 25 in 26 other countries including France, Germany and Japan.
Jobs said the iPad 2 is "dramatically faster" due to a new A5 chip. "The graphics in this thing are wonderful," he said.
Jobs said Apple sold nearly 15 million iPads between April and December generating nearly $10 billion in revenue. "We've never had a product that got off to that fast a start," Jobs said. "We have 90% of the market. "Our competitors were just flummoxed," he said. "They went back to their drawing boards, tore up their designs."
Rival manufacturers have been scrambling to bring their own tablet computers to market since Apple introduced the iPad in April.
Overall sales of tablets, which can be used to surf the Web, read electronic books, watch video and more, are forecast by market research firm Gartner to hit 55 million units this year.
The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year was rife with gadget manufacturers showing off tablets which they were racing to get into a market set ablaze by the iPad. Motorola Mobility's Xoom, which went on sale last week, is the first tablet powered by Honeycomb software crafted specifically for such devices by Internet powerhouse Google, and has been heralded as a viable challenger to the iPad. Another rival, South Korea's Samsung, has announced plans to come out with a large-screen version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, also powered by Honeycomb.
Jobs also announced that Random House would be making electronic books available for Apple's iBook store, joining other major publishers.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2011
