Edible Apple

NVIDIA President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang talking about Apple’s iPad and the burgeoning tablet market in general:

We know at this point that the projects that we’re working on, particularly in the tablets, has taken longer than we expected and it has taken longer than we expected by a few months, but the important thing is that you can’t just build a tablet, you can’t just put an operating system on a tablet and hope that on a piece of glass and hope that you can compete against the iPad. The iPad is a wonderful product. If you’re going to give that wonderful product to run for its money, you better build something absolutely exquisite.

So, whether it’s the quality of the work of the craftsmanship that our teams are working on or the capabilities of these devices, they have to be absolutely groundbreaking or why would anybody come to buy them? So, I think that the extra time that was necessary to build these devices and build the operating system and all the applications and the system software necessary to do it, and obviously we’re not going to talk about what they are right now, but they are going to be absolutely magical.

There’s a lot of tablets that are going to get built that aren’t really going to ship. And everybody is building tablets because it’s just so important. This is such an important part of the future computing market. This isn’t a fad. It is clear now that touch computing and tablets is a wonderful way for a lot of consumers to enjoy contents and by being able to connect a wireless keyboard and a mouse, the difference between a tablet and a notebook is pretty marginal.

I think that going forward you are going to see this tablet device being quite disruptive to both notebook as well as entry desktop. So I think this is an important trend and that’s every single company I know is working on a tablet. There is card companies working on tablets, consumer electronics companies working on tablets, computer companies working on tablets, and communications companies working on tablets. I don’t remember the last time in the history of computing where a singular device is being worked on by all of the industries.

This is a revolutionary form factor and I think it’s a foregone conclusion this is going to be probably be the largest computing segment. Now, how much of the share depends on ultimately how delightful all of these tablets are being built are and I am just so glad that we decided not to go to market with tablets earlier but to wait and work and put all of our energy behind the next generation operating system and the team over group are working on it.

Andy Rubin and his team are working 24×7 and they are doing amazing work and I am just really, really delighted that we decided to focus and not spare it on current generation operating systems. So I think when you see it near future it will more than delight you. I think you’ll be shocked how wonderful it is.

I believe that mobile computing is the future of computing. I believe that the tablet form factor and touch is not a fad. I believe that this particular form factor is likely to be very, very disruptive to be traditional form factors of computing. If you gave somebody a choice between a netbook and a tablet, and a wonderful tablet, why would anybody choose a netbook? So, the logic I think at this point is pretty clear and people see the trends. How big is it going to be to us depends on how well we execute.

The iPad is not your normal device waiting around for somebody to beat it, I mean, this is an extraordinary device. If you want to build something that is desirable and even more desirable to some other customers. You’ve got to build something great. You’re not just going to put a phone operating system on a larger display and ship it, you’re just not.