Intel had the iPad idea first, not Apple

If Intel press report is to be believed, iPad is the original idea of Intel. The name and the concept. Intel even had truck load of IPAD’s ready to be shipped. Each IPAD would have costed $500. Circuit City was the retailer and an ad in New York Times was out too. But then, Intel retracted. Probably the biggest mistake it has ever committed. Or the biggest lesson it taught itself.

The I in the iPad stands for Intel and pad is a tablet pc which is a touch screen device to consume media. The official branding of IPAD is Intel Web Tablet but never made it to the market. The original ‘IPAD’ from Intel was running ARM processor and dates back to 2001. This revelation is nothing to take away from Apple or a who’s first argument. It looks more of an analysis on why their product failed and what they could have done differently. An interesting read.

"We were at the beach celebrating, the trucks were rolling," Andersen said, when the call came to shut it all down.Circuit City was signed up to sell them, there was even an ad that ran in the New York Times, but not a single one of the tablets ever made it to stores."

"What made it so interesting to me was to realize how cutting edge we were from a usability perspective," Arrington said. "It was gratifying to say we were right."
Cobbley said what’s disappointing is that Intel had just started to figure out not only the design and the usage model, but the ecosystem for an entirely new business. He said the decision to shut down the tablet group and the entire consumer products division led to lost opportunity. He wonders what could have been — if Intel had stuck it out. (Intel PR)

These things happen on a smaller scale for people. But when it happens to companies, it could be a difference which can run in to billions. Intel would have been a different company now. 

Yet another inference from this episode : “Ideas are useless. Execution is King, Queen, Jack and Ace” Wanna bet?

PS : Someone who is in the middle of all this could write a book with a title “The iPad that wasn’t”