The tablet is here to stay and opportunities in this market are enormous. Raven Zachary, President of Small Society, explains how in the next few years the tablet war will begin with Apple being way ahead of the rest of the bunch.

The tablet market is a proven one. The iPad represents 10% of all of Apple’s sales which is a number that seemed to exceed even Apple’s own expectations. The iPad has helped Apple take over Nintendo and Sony’s share of the gaming market. And even though the sales have been big, 99.7% of the world’s population still does not own a tablet – the growth opportunities are huge!

As to the nonbelievers who still think that a tablet is neither nor - “Isn’t it just something between a computer and a smartphone?” - one might ask oneself: “Is the iPad in any way revolutionary?” The answer is: “No, it’s not and that is not a relevant question!”. The iPad fills the gap that many of us have been wishing to fill; We use our iMacs for working, writing and creating. We use our iPhones to keep us connected, updated and alert. The iPad is for playing, reading and consuming. The iPad represents the people on the move – create a Google doc at work and work on it from your iPad on your commute home.

Some of you may wonder if there is a reason for me to write on the iPad and not on any other tablet and of course there is - other than the obvious fact that I appreciate good design, technology that works well and well, yes, I guess I just appreciate Apple products in general. Other than The Kindle, which is a low-tech tablet that cannot exactly compare to the iPad, Apple was the first company to dig into the tablet market. This means that Apple now has 65,000 tablet apps compared to Android’s 19 (not 19,000 – just 19). There is virtually no competition. This does not mean that Android are not as good at developing tablets or apps as such  - it means that the tablet war are yet to begin.

However if Android wish to win this war they need to step their game up. They sure as hell won’t win anything with this attitude:  “To make our schedule to ship the tablets, we made some design tradeoffs.” – Andy Rubin, Google.