Apple’s introduction if its iPad a year ago appears to have upended the personal computing world according to this article in the Los Angeles Times. Among the repercussions, Microsoft stock recently experienced its largest single-day drop in two years on declining software sales.
Experts expect 50 million tablets to be sold this year, up from 19 million in 2010, with more than 100 million in 2012. While laptop sales will continue to be strong worldwide, manufacturers say they believe tablet sales will eclipse laptop sales in the United States next year.
Yet questions remain on college campuses. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that students at the Stanford School of Medicine stopped using iPads given to them a few weeks into the first term of use, preferring printed course materials instead. In addition, rebuilding wireless infrastructure on campus to support mobile devices can be expensive while getting students, faculty, and staff working together on the educational possibilities of the gadget often works better in some fields than other.
