Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: "The iPad isn't mobile"

November 3, 2010 11:42 AM
Anthony Ha
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MobileBeat 2013
July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA
Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Facebook held a press conference today focusing on its mobile platform. At the event, Mashable editor Ben Parr took the opportunity to ask whether Facebook is developing an iPad-specific application. All of today’s official announcements were around Facebook’s features on Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iPhone (and I’ll have posts up soon describing the news), but the iPad is a mobile device too, Parr argued.

“The iPad’s not mobile,” Zuckerberg responded. “It’s not mobile, it’s a computer.”

That prompted laughter from the audience, so Zuckerberg added that he isn’t trying to be “rude” to Apple. He just that wanted to focus on truly mobile products today, and the iPad “is not a mobile platform in the same way that a phone is.”

Maybe this is just a minor definitional dispute, but it’s still interesting to see Zuckerberg pushing back against a common practice in the tech industry to talk about the iPad and other tablets as mobile devices. One of the reporters at the conference noted that Apple would probably dispute Zuckerberg’s characterization of the iPad (especially since the iPad runs the iPhone operating system and iPhone apps).

Devindra Hardawar, VentureBeat’s lead mobile writer, sounded pleased when I told him about by Zuckerberg’s comments. (His response over instant message was, “VALIDATION.”) We keep sending him iPad and other tablet announcements because we see it as mobile news, and he keeps complaining that the iPad isn’t really a mobile device. Now he knows at least one person agrees with him.

[image via Facebook for Business]

  • karlkrantz

    You can ad me to that list of people that agree with Devindra. If you are looking at what it physcially looks like then maybe it looks mobile, but if you pay attention to how and when it is used, the iPad is more like a laptop. While a laptop is “mobile”, I wouldnt consider it mobile in the way a phone is mobile. People don't check something on the iPad while driving, or riding in an elevator, or walking down the street. People use iPads on Planes, Trains and buses, and at home on the couch, just like a laptop/netbook.

  • http://thesocialjoint.com/ Lucretia M Pruitt

    Translation: we are still stuck with that crappy little iPhone app for Facebook in the iPad. Ah well, usually access FB thru the flipbook app anyways. Much prettier and easier to read that way.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_WVFMMGPYYR7HYG2LXYYOMZMXYU nexus

    The iPad is a portable communications device because it connects to WiFi, yet no one can deliver high-speed long distance WiFI. The iPad is also portable just because you can take it along with you anywhere at anytime. We need to rethink pragmatically mobile computing by providing free accessible high speed HF connectivity to “mobile” (take anywhere) device like the iPad.

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