The iPad. It’s first orders have finally reached the hands of happy West Australian customers, including our MD Carlo. This week I have explored how tourism, publishing, entertainment and apparel have been quick to integrate iPads into their business and marketing approach. Along the way I’ve included some take-aways to consider for your own brand and business.

Why should you be at least open-minded to the iPad?

Just look at the drop in sales of netbooks in April when the iPad launched and the slump ever since it was first announced. This gives us an idea of the potential of people to replace their laptops.

Within 3 years the stripped down versions of the iPad (16GB wireless) are likely to retail at $199. Suddenly households can afford to have a few of them around the house. Henry Blodget predicts they will be left around the house like today’s books, newspaper and magazines for anyone in the household to pick up and use.

So let’s look at how some industries have adopted the iPad.

Tourism

InterContinental Hotels & Resorts concierges will use the iPad to help their guests with directions through interactive maps on the device with high-resolution satellite imagery, close-up street views and detailed walking routes. They will utilize the hotels own destination-specific videos, to bring recommendations to life and make bookings and confirmations instantly by e-mail.

Take-away: How could your staff use the iPad as tool to help customers?

Jetstar has just announced plans to use the iPad as an in-flight entertainment device. They are claiming a world first, although so is Bluebox Avionics.

Take-away: It’s a relatively cost device to lend/hire to your customers during their experience with your business… could you integrate it at your point of sale, showroom?

Publishing

New York Times, Wired, GQ, The Australian, Mashable are just a handful of magazines, blogs and newspapers to get onboard and launch their own iPad app.

The good news for the publishing industry is we are now used to paying for apps on the mobile, it’s a logical assumption we’ll be happy to pay for iPad apps too.

Wired sold 24,000 iPad apps on its first day in the App Store at $4.99USD

It’s also interesting to get the point of view from Wired’s creative director http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwFbwHaP5tE&feature=player_embedded

Time Magazine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avM3Aor7Ptg

New York Times

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dbNj5XGC14&feature=related

I like the way you can save and sync stories to your iPhone.

Mashable

Sports Illustrated

One of the features I really liked was the interactivity between watching the game on TV and seeing live results on your iPad.

Take-away: This changes the way we read magazines and the paper. Instead if flicking through magazines we’ll be sliding and side swiping. To zoom in and out on copy and photos we’ll be pinching. We can launch video, slideshows of imagery all at full screen. The experience becomes more immersive and less linear. We’ll need to consider all the different ways people will now expect to experience content.

Advertising in these apps brings with it limitless opportunities in video and using the unique tilt, shake, pinch, rotate functionality to make your messaging truly interactive.

Entertainment

Walt Disney were fast to launch an iPad app just in time for the premier of the movie Alice in Wonderland. As this video shows they utlisze the ‘tilt’, ‘shake’, ‘rotate’ interactivity really well.

Apparel

Nike Football Training iPad App

With this app football coaches can tailor their own training programs based on top international teams, watch tutorials from top players, improve their teams via training drills, instructions, challenges, tests and information on how coaches can get the best out of their players.

Take-away: iPad apps are another way to deliver useful services or utilities to your market.

Editd

Editd by Stylesignal delivers fashions forecasts via an iPad app. Subscribers can now “pinch to zoom, touch to see a colour palette based on industry referenced colours, or move from street style photos to catwalk pictures at the flick of a finger,” it says.

Take-away: The pinch to zoom delivers incredible detail which a paper catalogue or online photos simply can’t compete with. When you add video, live updates, personalization and mobility into the mix suddenly product catalogues get a whole lot richer.

That’s just a quick tour around some of the early adopters of iPads. You can see more references at the end of the post.

Let me leave you with some thoughts from industry leaders, courtesy of Wired :

Gina Bianchini 
CEO, Ning

A smartphone is mobile, but it isn’t fun to browse on. On a laptop, the technology is built in, but few want to carry around a 6-pound computer for the privilege of using a browser. The tablet bridges this gap. People will not only engage in new social experiences but will do so on a device that’s easy (and beautiful) to use, wherever they may feel so inspired.

Nicholas Negroponte 
Founder, One Laptop per Child;
first investor in Wired

Texting is replacing talking, and thumbs are replacing lips. Laptops, meanwhile, are not mobile. They are nomadic. You have to sit down to use one and do battle for a connection. Standing with a laptop is entirely unsatisfactory.

Tablets are therefore the new frontier. They are the new book, the new newspaper, the new magazine, the new TV screen, and potentially the new laptop.

More reading:

Mashable: 10 Must-Have Apps for the New iPad Owner

Wired: How the Tablet Will Change the World

Longtail: Does the iPad affect you?

Reviews:

iPadAppReviewTV

Apple apps for iPad

Mashable iPad Videos