By: Varun Parmar, Sr. Director of Product Management
The third-generation iPad features have added new possibilities to the way we can work. It’s all about connectivity! You can now collaborate outside your office and access your content anywhere at blazing fast speeds. Apple has added some new features that are going to arm professionals with a PC-level experience, incent developers to create more powerful apps, increase the BYOD movement, and encourage enterprises to accelerate their mobile security policies.
Four things we can expect following the release of the third-generation iPad:
- Connectivity in the field. Professionals in the sales field, for example, are given the opportunity with the third-generation iPad dual-core processor to now have similar computing horse power as an average laptop in the market. Let’s imagine you are a sales rep at a tradeshow. You meet up with a customer and they agree to do an impromptu customer video. So you take your iPad to capture an HD video. Then, use the iMovie application on the iPad to edit your video. Finally, you’re able to save your video to your YouSendIt Cloud folders to share with your customer success team on the spot from your iPad. This just wasn’t possible a couple years ago.
- More sophisticated apps. App developers will take advantage of these capabilities to create more powerful and sophisticated apps. Apps that you normally use on your desktop can easily run on the new iPad. We are going to be able to have a complete work experience all from your tablet.
- BYOD to accelerate. Consider these facts: In 3 days 3 million third-generation iPads were sold (source: Apple Press). By 2016, 900M tablets will be purchased – one for every 8th person on Earth (source: Gartner Symposium, October 2011). According to VentureBeat, already 41% of companies have employees bringing their own personal tablets into the work place and using it both personally and professionally. You can bet at least a couple 100 thousand more tablets will be used in the workplace for personal and professional use in the coming years.
- Mobile security policy adoption. Enterprises should expect more and more tablets to enter their companies. If enterprises have not created mobile device management policies they will have to now. With YouSendIt, we strive to develop all of our apps with the enterprise in mind; for example remote wipe and enforce passcodes. We have also just recently announced our partnership with an MDM vendor MobileIron.
With all the advancements from the third-generation iPad, I am excited to see how other tablets are going to keep up, but also excited to see when the new iPhone5 comes out.
Love to hear others' thoughts on the future of work - add your comments below.
