The headlines tease that the iPad 2 camera supplier has been revealed, unintentionally, and promise to tell you who that supplier is. They miss the point. Outside of the biggest iPad enthusiasts this side of Cupertino, no one cares about the name of the iPad 2’s camera maker. Here’s the vital part of the headline: the iPad 2 has a camera supplier. And therefore a camera. And therefore can do photos and video. And it can do FaceTime. And maybe even PhotoBooth. And, while this has been mentioned almost nowhere, the rise of a camera in the iPad 2 will open the floodgates for iPad-specific camera apps, which up until now have had no reason to exist. Will app developers gamble ahead of time and go ahead and start work on iPad camera apps now, or will they play it safe and wait until iPad 2 with a camera is official? Will the thousands of iPhone-oriented camera apps already in the App Store work with the iPad, and will their smaller size be a hindrance? With this story floating around about the iPad 2 having a camera, how many ears will it reach, and how many or few potential late 2010 iPad sales will be delayed to 2011 because of it?
So you start to see where the real iPad 2 camera story is, and the name of the vendor has little to do with it. Truth is, the iPad is such a mainstream product (as opposed to being solely a geek-oriented product) that most iPad users can’t name the microprocessor inside (A4) and almost none can name the technical specs of that processor or which vendor manufactures it. They sure do know that the iPad is faster than some past iProducts, and that’s what matters to them. With regards to the iPad 2 camera situation, all this news about the camera supplier being identified means is that the iPad 2 apparently has a camera. Keep in mind that this news doesn’t mean anything is certain. The 2009 iPod touch model was supposedly all but certain to have a camera, and then at the last minute it didn’t. Whether that was a strategic decision or technical problem is something that only Apple knows. But it shows that even with the iPad 2’s camera vendor having been tossed into the public spotlight, nothing is guaranteed. And that’s to say nothing about how the mere fact that this news has leaked might ultimately affect Apple’s decision making process. It wouldn’t be the first time a leak has caused Apple to change plans or change vendors.
