Wow. What a week. Let’s summarize (oh, these are snarky):

• HP announces webOS Everywhere strategy. Make way for new smartphones, updated smartphones, tablets, and… webOS coming to a PC near you. The last one is the shocker and barely discussed, but most pundits are taking it as HP divorcing Microsoft. As for me… I will be the only honest one. Who knows?
• Meanwhile, it turns out, Microsoft doesn’t care so much about HP asking for a divorce because they were already in bed with Nokia. It appears that Nokia is dropping their go-their-own-way Meego and eventually Symbian in favor of being another Windows Phone 7 box. That’s a way to act like a market leader, Nokia. Grovel to the guy with 1.5% market share.
• RIM apparently is working on making Android apps work on their tablets, which makes it possible to write WebWork apps, Adobe Air apps, Adobe Flash apps and Android apps all for the platform, not to mention BlackBerry OS. RIM’s starting to feel like the back-alley watch salesman. Don’t like that option? Here’s twenty more to choose from.
• Apple keeps doing what they do: sell freakin’ devices. Rumors: over a million in the first day on Verizon. 1 million units! And guess what? Everyone is disappointed! (I wish I could be disappointed like that.)
• And Google… oh wait. Google was quiet this week. I guess that was expected after elevating their CEO out of the building two weeks ago and announcing Android version 3 (Honeycomb).

What One Developer Heard

Now that I summarized the news, let me tell you what I heard this week as a developer:

Blah blah … Apple sold another million units to a bunch of people that didn’t have iPhones before on a new network that will net millions of new iPhone customers, some of which will buy my products… blah blah … HP webOS everywhere … blah blah … Android on RIM? Great. Don’t have to develop specifically for RIM anymore … blah blah … Windows Phone 7 on Nokia? Excellent. I now have four platforms to worry about instead of seven.

…And Then There Were Four

(Sorry, Genesis, I know I butchered the album title.) So that leaves us with four major platforms: iOS, Android, webOS and Windows Phone 7. That’s what I call a good week for developers. (Oh, wait. Unless of course you make your living developing for Symbian or BlackBerry or QNX or Windows Mobile or Palm OS or …)

Ah, yes, real choice. On your right we have the iPad, on your left a bevy of Android tablets, center-right we have RIM’s Playbook and center-left the HP/Palm TouchPad. And call me impressed. They are all interesting players in this market and have a chance to do big things. Of course, only one is really shipping — the iPad — and the devil is in the details. Lets see how the other devices actually work before calling winners and losers. Again from my January post, Apple and HP have the tablet advantage here because they understand how to distribute product outside of the carriers.

The discussion that is peaking my interest is the “when should the iPad ship” discussion. The gist of the argument, started by John Gruber at Daring Fireball, is that moving iPad launches to the fall positions the iPad as a holiday purchase item like iPods.

While I understand his reasoning, I respectfully disagree. March or April is the perfect time. I can sum this up in one word: education.

The iPad is going to be huge in education. I have never seen technology being adopted in the classroom as fast as this is. The reason is simple: the iPad fills the need education understood in the Palm days. Students are more engaged, can learn more and in their style, and direct manipulation (touch or pen) changes kids’ psyche like no other technology that has come before. Palm missed this one when they fired their education team in 2005. Apple, five years later, is picking up the slack. (Disclaimer: Palm’s dumb-ass decision cost me millions of dollars.)

Why is spring important for education? Because all the major trade shows and all of the budgets happen in the spring and summer. By bringing out new technology in the spring, Apple can ride that natural wave into the classroom.

And I doubt any kid is going to forget about the iPad by the time they’re writing letters begging Santa for Christmas gifts.

I have been writing recently about how the real mobile war is not between Android and iOS but between smartphone vendors and the carriers. So the natural question coming out of Apple’s Verizon deal is whether this will change the dynamics in this war.

The short answer: no.

Apple is the exception that proves the rule. When it comes to the smartphone world, only Apple is more powerful than the carriers. Google is subservient in this space due to the way they distribute Android. Anyone can use it and the carriers are happy to do just that. Other licensees could put their foot down but won’t. Motorola, RIM, Samsung, LG, HTC seem to be too reliant on the carrier distribution models to fight AT&T, Verizon and the rest. Microsoft’s distribution model has the same problems as Android’s — relying on licensees makes it beholden to the licensees, not the consumers. Besides, Windows Phone 7 is inconsequential right now as Microsoft’s discontinued Windows Mobile operating system is still outselling the new OS. (HP/Palm could follow Apple’s lead but is a massive wildcard right now.)

So what does the Apple-Verizon relationship mean? Nothing at all in the short term but everything in the long term. If Apple becomes the 80% market share winner then the carriers will bend to its will. If Apple becomes the 20% market share winner then carriers will continue to treat it as an outlier, letting Apple do what it wants as the carriers wield the Android shield.

I have heard a lot of theories about why Apple will or why Apple won’t dominate tablets.

The common argument in favor is that Apple has a head start and basically invented the first mass consumed tablet. They didn’t do this with PCs. The early days of PCs were a wild west affair with lots of manufacturers selling a small number of devices. (The Apple II, wildly successful, sold 16,000 units in its first year.) Of course, early leads often evaporate. Need an example? How about TiVo.

The common argument against is that the tablet market will be the PC market all over again with Google as Microsoft and Apple as Apple. This is wrong, too. The market dynamics are different. Google makes money from advertising, not software sales, so is unmotivated to only make a YouTube app, for example, for Android only. And Apple of 1987 is not Apple of 2007. We no longer have compatibility issues, software sales (apps) is a strong reason for owning a device or not, and there is no big, standalone behemoth to “make a market winner” as IBM did with Microsoft and Intel. Never mind the democratizing effects of the web.

So what do I think? I think Apple and the iPad will dominate the market but for a different reason than any I have heard: distribution.

First, the tablet market is vastly different from the smartphone market for this reason. We have been trained here in the United States to go to a special store to buy our phones. These stores, of course, are owned by the carriers and these carriers, to get you to sign up for multiple years, heavily discount these phones making them all appear equal — or relatively so — in price.

I believe tablets are different. I think our expectation will be to buy a tablet and then sign up for a service, if we even need one, and I don’t believe we will be hoodwinked into a multi-year contract and service plan. In fact, I don’t think most people will even buy a wireless plan to go with their device. Instead they will use the built-in wifi.

This levels the playing field. Now the game is about distribution. Apple’s competitors — RIM, Palm, Samsung, etc. — have never known a world where they sell outside of a carrier store. Android licensees and RIM, in particular, have never sold a device without carrier marketing and subsidy. Their inclination will be to sell through the same channel they know and have developed. Except this partner wants to ensure a wireless subscription and will require their partners to include it.

Apple, on the other hand, (and HP/Palm to an extent) sell everywhere: Apple stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Target, Walmart, even Marshall’s/TJ Maxx for goodness sakes. (What the heck is Marshall’s/TJ Maxx doing selling iPads??) Oh, and they sell them via AT&T and Verizon also.

Apple has the power of distribution, a ubiquitous brand, on its side. They aren’t restricted to a single store or a single carrier. And price subsidies will play far less of a factor. In the end, Apple’s iPad will win because it can be found and bought everywhere.