Edible Apple

The affect of the iPhone and iPad on the technological landscape has been momentous. Apple single handedly ushered in a wave of new and more advanced smartphone devices with the release of the iPhone. And with the release of the iPad last year, Apple, once again, single handedly resurrected a tablet market that had previously been nothing more than hot air.

While Apple’s success has been a boon for all consumers, the same can’t be said for the heads of competing companies. Last week Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci resigned amidst the companies unsuccessful efforts to compete with Apple’s iPad and line of MacBooks. Moreover, Digitimes cites sources from other notebook makers who note that former Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and former LG CEO Nam Yong also stepped down on account of their struggles to successfully battle an onslaught of successful Apple products.

Digitimes notes that the iPad in particular served as a major disruptive force for Acer’s 2010 netbook plans while completely messing up “Acer’s lineup for the entry level notebook market.” As a result, Acer experienced little growth in shipments, and attempts to release its own tablet device ultimately failed as the company was unable to match the iPad both in terms of hardware and software.

The report relays that CEO’s from other companies are also in danger of losing their jobs if they can’t adequately keep their business’ from being submerged by Apple’s tidal wave of successful iOS products. Executives from companies like Toshiba, Asus, and Lenovo in particular were mentioned by name.

So much for Acer chairman JT Wang’s August prediction that iPads marketshare was going to drop to just 20% once rival tablets hit the market. Wang based his opinion on the fact that Android smartphone shipments had surpassed iPhone shipments and that Google’s open Android OS was better than Apple’s closed iOS. But tablets are an entirely different beast. While many smartphone users might delight in having a phone double as a device that can browse the web and send email, tablet users need a lot more than that to justify the cost. To that end, the 65,000 dedicated iPad apps completely dwarf the 20 or so apps specifically designed for Gingerbread, Google’s OS for tablet devices.