Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Killing the iPad 3g softly, from Inside


What is the most likely thing you will carry in your pocket if you are a tablet owner. I am guessing you will have a killer smart phone that can do almost everything except the dishes. No wait, it could possibly do that as well - there must be an app for it.

The leader in tablets, Apple has two flavours of the Ipad - Wifi and 3g+Wifi. You pay a cool $130 extra to get the 3G capability on your pad. But step back and think, is it worth it ? You may say yes, it is. I need to be connected to the internet when I am travelling and there may be no wifi around.

Think again and reach for your pocket and look to the skies (there would be a cell tower around somewhere). I am willing to bet your Apple iPhone has atleast 2-3 bars of signal strength (provided you are not covering up the antenna area!) and that is all you will need to connect your iPad to the Internet - the magic of wireless tethering.

Very powerful concept, that allows your phone to effectively become a router to other devices including laptops and tablets. It does not really make sense any more to pay extra for that 3G capability. I would love to see, how Apple responds!

The game now hinges on your service provider, to provide you with a plan that encourages you to use reams of data on your smartphone. This means a couple of things for service providers

1. All devices are made equal - No disparity in charges per mb depending on the device that consumes the data
2. Exponential growth of data traffic on the wireless network - Time to redo calibration of network capacity