Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes that tablets are not for geeks and nerds, but for everyone else. He considers the devices the culmination of what the other co-founder, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, wanted to create at the company from the very beginning. During a keynote session at Storage Networking World in Santa Clara, California, Wozniak was asked how he thought tablets would change the computer industry. Here was his response, according to ComputerWorld:
"The tablet is not necessarily for the people in this room," Wozniak told the audience of enterprise storage engineers. "It's for the normal people in the world. I think Steve Jobs had that intention from the day we started Apple, but it was just hard to get there, because we had to go through a lot of steps where you connected to things, and (eventually) computers grew up to where they could do ... normal consumer appliance things."
I can certainly agree with this perspective. I have never been particularly excited about tablets, at least not personally - I understand their importance in the news, but I don't believe such a device would fit any of my own needs. Many of my peers feel the same way, but we're all very aware at how quickly the tablet space is growing, and how much more it is expected to explode.
Last year, the iPad dominated the tablet space but this year there are many more competitors coming, including new and old OEMs pushing Android, RIM with its BlackBerry PlayBook, and the HP TouchPad. Last year, Android passed the iPhone in US market share, and there are predictions that the same will happen in the tablet space.
Wozniak hopes it doesn't. "On the subject of tablets, I read today that Android tablets are expected to surpass iPads, and I hope that never happens," he said. He may end up being very disappointed.