iPad 2 Reactions: What does Rob Smith of Blueleaf think?

Here’s a few thoughts from Rob Smith, Digital Director of the interactive agency Blueleaf.

“There are only two releases of recent Apple products that have not really excited me – one is the iPhone 3GS (which was just a slightly souped up 3G) and one is the iPad2 (slightly souped up iPad). It will make them money and keep the coffers full no doubt, but it’s not a good leap forward (think iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4 leap).

Whether Apple will sell a million of these a month and 50m by the end of the year remains to be seen. Maybe they will as tablet sales are continually growing, however recently Apple didn’t reach 5m sales for the quarter for the iPad as expected. I would predict something more in the region of 20m in a year.

So, what does this mean for the rest of the industry languishing (or ‘floundering’ as Apple puts it)? We’ll see a plethora of tablet devices come out this year. Apple has done a very good job of controlling the entire ecosystem from app store to hardware to iTunes – it’s hard to break out of that ecosystem, especially if you already have an iPhone. Competing on price will need to be a strong play for other competitors to tempt people away.”

Blueleaf create engaging digital experiences for clients so that all their digital channels – from their website to their email, mobile phones to Facebook – add massively to their bottom line results.

Thank you Rob!