www.nickhodge.com

The recent escal­a­tion of rumours sur­round­ing the so-called Apple Tab­let / Slate / Big iPhone / xxx (where xxx is a super cool Apple-ish name) seem to focus on the hard­ware. The gad­getry. The hard­ware specs.

I am a little over gad­getry. Every week there is a new phone, device or somesuch that junks the old tech­no­logy. Surely this is neither eth­ical nor sus­tain­able?

But that is not where the innov­a­tion, nor the future lies for Apple. Recent Apple acquis­i­tions, invest­ments and suc­cesses leads me to con­clude that Apple and Google are about to square off. Not in search. Search is rather bor­ing and a commodity.

In the forth­com­ing weeks, ignore the hard­ware. Hard­ware is dime-a-dozen, and many vendors are going to release slate like gad­getry in a sim­ilar form factor. Rather, watch what Apple does with their iTunes / App store. Presently this sys­tem provides music, tv, movies and with the advent of the iPhone – Apps.

The next depart­ment for the store are news­pa­pers, magazines and books. Either sold as sub­scrip­tion, or with embed­ded advert­ising. Just wait.

The rev­enue model will appeal to the tra­di­tional main­stream media — so expect a con­tinu­ing ava­lanche of obsequious and self-serving cov­er­age. Not of the store — but rather the hard­ware. Embed­ded within these stor­ies will be the expect­a­tion of a holy grail. The holy grail of the future of print media, without paper.

Some­how, I doubt it.