• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 17, 2011

Tracey Scheppach, SVP, Video Innovation Director, SMGX/VivaKi, got her Mobile Insider Summit "5% Solution" panel off with an important question, asking each panelist to explain their top reason why they thing tablet computers are going to be huge.

Interestingly, most of the panelists gave good reasons, but mainly cited iPads, not necessarily tablets as a category. And most of them, including Scheppach herself, cited personal user experiences and observations as their reason.

Gregg Hano, VP Group Publisher, Bonnier Technology Group, Bonnier Corp., cited what happened when Bonnier moved into tablet publishing and bought him an iPad in April 2010. He said he brought it home over Easter break and watched as all the kids visiting his household "fought" over using it.

Scheppach had an even more personal example, citing an anecdote that happened about six months ago, when her six year old child came up to her bedroom on a Saturday morning at about 6 a.m. and asked her to "turn the TV on." A groggy-eyed Scheppach essentially ignored the request and went back to sleep. A couple of hours later, she went downstairs and found her six-year-old using her iPad.

When she asked why, her child said, because, "I don't know how to turn on the TV."

When Scheppach offered to demonstrate how to turn the TV on, her child said, not to bother, because, "It doesn't really do anything."

"At that moment, I knew it was a game-changer," Scheppach said.

That anecdote is insightful, because one of the main reasons the consumer electronics industry – the people how manufacture and market conventional TV sets – has always cited as an advantage over the computer industry is the intuitive, plug-and-play usability of TV sets vs. computers. If the summit panelists' observations about iPads is true, then Apple may have actually surpassed that with the iPad.

But wait there's more. It's also a pretty good money-maker, according to Rockfish Interactive's Joe Saumweber, who said he recently spent some time thumbing through some Omniture data and found that, "the iPad alone generated more page views and revenue than all other mobile devices combined."