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San Francisco. After months of feverish speculation, Steven Jobs has introduced what Apple hopes will be the coolest device on the planet: a slender tablet computer called the iPad.

For all the hoopla surrounding it, however, the question is whether the iPad can achieve anything close to the success of the iPhone, which transformed the cellphone and forced the industry to race to catch up.

Apple is positioning the device, some versions of which will be available in March, as a pioneer in a new genre of computing, somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone.

“The bar is pretty high,” Jobs acknowledged. “It has to be far better at doing some key things.”

Half an inch thick and weighing 1 1/2 pounds, the device will vividly display books, newspapers, Web sites and videos on a 9.7-inch glass touch screen. Giving media companies another way to sell content, it may herald a new era for publishing.

But the iPad, costing $499 to $829, lacks some features common in laptops and phones, as technology enthusiasts were quick to point out. To its instant critics, it was little more than an oversize iPod Touch.

A camera is notably absent, and Flash, the ubiquitous software that handles video and animation on the Web, does not work on the device.

The event, in typical Apple style, was tightly scripted and heavy on theatrics and hyperbole. But the success of the iPhone, and the hive of rumors and leaks surrounding the iPad, raised expectations and made this perhaps Jobs’s most highly anticipated product unveiling yet.

Jobs said the iPad was the best device for some kinds of computing, like browsing the Web, reading e-books and playing video.

The iPad “is so much more intimate than a laptop, and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen,” he said. “It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands.”

One question Apple faces is whether there is enough room for another device in the cluttered lives of consumers.

“I think this will appeal to the Apple acolytes, but this is essentially just a really big iPod Touch,” said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. He said he expected the iPad to mostly cannibalize the sales of other Apple products.

Golvin said book lovers would continue to opt for lighter, cheaper e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle, while people looking for a small Web-ready computer would gravitate toward the budget laptops known as netbooks.

But other analysts say they have heard similar criticism before — once aimed at the iPhone, which has now been bought by more than 42 million people around the world. These believers say Apple’s judgment of the market is nearly infallible.

“The target audience is everyone,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president for strategy and analysis at Interpret, a market research company. “Apple does not build products for just the enthusiasts. It doesn’t build for the tens of thousands; it builds for the tens of millions.”

Apple said the iPad would run the 140,000 applications developed for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, but the company expected a new wave of programs tailored to the iPad.

One of the most significant applications for the iPad may be Apple’s own creation, called iBooks, an e-reading program that will connect to Apple’s new online e-bookstore. Apple’s announcement that it was diving into the growing e-book business put the company on a collision course with Amazon.

Jobs credited Amazon with pioneering e-readers with the Kindle but said “we are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther.”

Other companies have sold tablet computers for years, but they never caught on with consumers. In 2001, Bill Gates predicted at an industry trade show that tablets would be the most popular form of PC within five years.

Apple has been working on a tablet computer for more than a decade. Improved technology has helped the company to finally bring one to market, as has the ubiquity of wireless networks.

The success of the iPhone and its cousin, the iPod Touch, have shown a path for tablets. People have been willing to pay to customize those devices with applications, turning them into video game machines, compasses, city guides and e-book readers.

 

The New York Times