Apple targets apps as differentiator

Apple targets apps as differentiator

Steve Jobs took a harsher tone in deriding competing tablets' scant app capabilities, noting at the releaseof iPad 2, just after the debut of Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb, that there were "at most 100 apps" for it. In reality there were only about 17.

At the time, Jobs could boast 350,000 App Store titles, 65,000 ofwhich were optimized to "take full advantage of the iPad," drawing attention to "consumption apps, creation apps and fantastic games, and a lot of apps for business and vertical markets apps like medical. The things people are doing here are amazing," he said.

Today there are over 775,000 App Store titles, 300,000 of which are specific to iPad. At the launch of iPad 4 and iPad mini last October, Apple's head of product marketing Phil Schiller drew special attention tothe "night and day" difference between tablet-optimized iPad apps and the stretched smartphone apps that work on Android tablets (above, TripAdvisor on both).