Disney, the iPad and Consumption

A few days ago Dan Warne, an Australian tech journalist and writer for apcmag.com, posted an article at the later site with nice pictures about the upcoming ABC iPad app.  It looks pretty snazzy!

The article has some nice discussion and some very nice pictures of the app in action on an iPad.  It also has some interesting comments that I think show just how closely Apple and The Walt Disney Company have become, with Mobile Producer Manuela Davidson being noted as saying she:

‘… told us ABC had been planning its iPad app before Steve Jobs even announced the iPad, because it seemed such a sure thing that Apple was going to release a tablet-sized "iDevice", and it was clear this would be a great way to provide ABC content to people.’

More like: ‘we knew about this in advance, so we started on it right away’.  They weren’t fast enough to be a launch partner, but that’s probably because the upgrades required in the backend to take advantage of the higher resolution needed time to be brought online.

I was thinking about this article in the back of my mind today because Jeffrey Katzenberg was apparently all about his iPad today at the All Things Digital D8 conference, an annual tech event hosted by the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Fisher.  What’s REALLY interesting to note is you can consume what feels like a million Disney related properties on iTunes (and therefore the iPad and iPhone), but not ONE Dreamworks Animation movie…  You can buy or rent a very LARGE chunk of Disney’s movies and TV properties through iTunes, and here soon stream most of the current TV content using the iPad app (one already exists for the iPhone).

Mr. Katzenberg talks about how large movie libraries are becoming less and less valuable because of a ‘systematic change’ in content consumption.  We’ve heard a similar tale from Bob Iger and team as well, as DVD sales have continued to slide from their peek as people shift their consumption habits.  The question is of course how much does seemingly ubiquitous access to content offset that apparent decline in value?  Media is only ‘worth’ something when somebody will pay to see it after all.

The iPad is a bit of a tech classification football right now in that it doesn’t fit neatly into any current category easily (too big for a pocket/smart device, too limited to be a netbook or a laptop competitor).  However, in its current incarnation I’m tending to agree with Paul Thurrott’s recent assessment more and more (though maybe not in as strong a terms) that at the end of the day the iPad is really a consumption device with some added light productivity functions.  That became even more apparent to me today when James Kendrick of mobile tech site jkOnTheRun admitted in a blog post that he has a ‘consumption’ addiction; that of buying iPad apps!

The iPod, iPhone and the whole iTuned ecosystem has, at its base level, always been about providing the best end-to-end tech experience for consumption.  Bob Iger seems to agree, as does Jeffrey, only one seems to be really doing something about it at the moment however.