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9 Powerful Business Uses For Tablet Computers

3Comments | Chris Murphy | February 10, 2012 15:00 PM

From the warehouse to the sales floor, see how companies creatively use iPads and other tablets to save time and money, sell more, and delight customers. Tablets may even find a home on garbage trucks.

9 Powerful Business Uses For Tablet Computers

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Video

Video is an underexploited element of tablets today that's likely to grow. Furniture seller Holly Hunt uses iPads in warehouses, where staff can take a quick video of an incoming product--$150-a-yard silk, for example--that looks of suspect quality, and email the images to the purchasing agent to check if they should accept it.

This kind of informal video use--whether recordings or impromptu video chats--will grow as more people experiment with tablets. So will the use of video in sales, since tablets make it much easier for someone to call up a 30-second video from the device and hand the tablet to the prospect to watch it. Snyder of Mobiquity predicts tablets will "unleash a video monster."

There's a big limitation today with how long it takes to upload video, given the huge file size of video, says Lohia, of Blast Radius. But the tablet is "a great vehicle for taking video," says Lohia, and he thinks companies will find creative new uses as they work around those limits.

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