According to a very interesting news story in the Wall Street Journal today, the iPad is very much thriving in the business world, contrasting greatly with the way in which the iPhone was viewed by businesses when it first came out. The article provides the example of a Chicago law firm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, which banned the iPhone when it first came out, but preordered 10 iPads before the tablet was even released. The firm’s technology department now has more than 50 attorneys set up with iPads, and expects to be issuing iPads instead of laptops as early as next year. This would seem to bear up Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook’s comments back in July when he said that Apple was surprised how popular the iPad was proving to be with Fortune 100 companies.
The WSJ article points out that more than 500 of the 11,000 -plus iPad apps are in the business category, citing the example of the Citrix Systems app that enables people to access programmes stored in the cloud via the iPad, and that has already been downloaded more than 145,000 times.
“Everyone in IT is jumping on this one,†Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research told the WSJ. “Rather than wait for people to start complaining they’re saying why don’t we get a few of them in and see what they are good for.â€
Simon Woods of eye-care product firm Bausch & Lomb, which devised its own app for its salespeople, said that one of the main attractions of the iPad over the laptop was the quick start-up time, adding that when you’re in front of a customer, those few minutes saved can make all the difference between making a sale and not making a sale.
Source: Wall Street Journal
