The year that is coming to an end has brought one of the most interesting novelties in the field of electronics and technology: the iPad.

At the beginning of the year all the specialized blogs and websites reported the news of the presentation of the iPad, a new and innovative instrument. The official presentation of the tablet computer produced by Apple took place, more precisely, on the 27th of January 2010 on the stage of the Yerba Buena in San Francisco and has been carried out by Steve Jobs, the president of Apple, who showed the new product during a conference in front of a group of 600 selected analysts and journalists coming from all over the world. The presentation of the iPad took place after a big media campaign, which had stimulated the curiosity of the technology and electronics addicted, making letting out only few indiscretions, but no certain news. With the official presentation of the product the mystery has been unraveled, and the whole world has had the possibility to view the Apple product, its multi-touch 9,7-inch monitor, its liquid crystal display and its various functions, like web browsing, sending e-mail, reading e-books, online newspapers and magazines, watching movies, videos and photos, listening to music and so on.

About 3 millions pieces of this small jewel of technology, which has been conceived for a long-range diffusion, were sold in the first three months after the launch. The success achieved by the iPad has caused many doubts about the possibility it had to replace the PC completely, invading its market, but the first data regarding the sales of PC and iPad reveal that the dominant trend is not replacing the old PC with the more modern instrument, but using both. 90% of the iPad that have been sold, indeed, are added to, and do not replace, the more "ancient" electronic instruments, which can already be found in the consumers’ houses. This is what emerges from the "iPad Owner Survey", a study carried out by the society Npd to analyze the impact that the innovative tablet has had on the market of computers. The data that have been gathered show that only 13% of the iPad and 24% of the e-book readers that have been purchased have replaced the pc. Another interesting data regards the connection between the iPad owners and those who have other Apple products: 48% of the people who have bought the tablet were already Mac fans, while 38% also have an iPhone.

As far as the challenge between iPad and other technological instruments is concerned, the competition will probably be between iPad and other similar items, like netbooks, notebooks, e-readers, and in future between iPad and other types of tablets. The iPad can be seen as a pioneer product of a new market that will expand in the future, also due to other competitors.

The first decade of the new millennium is coming to an end, let’s get ready to welcome a new decade that will probably bring even more technological innovations than the previous one.