Apple unveils the iPad

Apple has unveiled the iPad, a tablet computer with a 9.7-inch touch screen, which it hopes will create a new category of device between the smartphone and the laptop.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, introduced the iPad at an event in San Francisco on 27 January. It will go on sale in the United States in March, with prices starting at $499.

A big iPhone?

The iPad looks like a larger version of the iPhone, and runs the same software. It is half an inch thick, weighs about 680 grams and has a battery that Apple says will last for ten hours.

Users can browse the web, read and send email, watch videos, look at photographs, listen to music and play games. It will run most of the 140,000 programs available for the iPhone, as well as new programs designed for the larger screen.

Some models will include 3G mobile connections, allowing users to go online wherever they are.

Books and newspapers

Apple is launching an online bookshop, the iBookstore, alongside the iPad, and has signed deals with several major publishers. The device will compete with electronic readers such as Amazon's Kindle.

Newspaper and magazine publishers are hoping that the iPad could help them earn money from digital editions, at a time when advertising revenue and print sales are falling.

Tablets before

Tablet computers are not new. Microsoft and several manufacturers have promoted them for years, but they have never caught on with the public, partly because they were expensive and difficult to use with a stylus.

Apple is betting that its touch screen technology and its range of programs will succeed where others have failed.

Mixed reactions

Some analysts have been disappointed, saying the iPad offers little that cannot be done on a laptop or a smartphone. Others have criticised its lack of a camera and its inability to run more than one program at a time.

The name has also been mocked on the internet.

But Apple has a track record of changing markets with the iPod and the iPhone, and many in the industry believe the iPad could change the way people use computers at home.